


Grace Notes: A Collection of Mass Effect Ficlets

by tarysande



Series: Grace Shepard [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-12 15:19:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 72
Words: 51,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/813035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of ficlet drabbles in the same Grace Shepard continuity (though not always centering on her as main character).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gargalesthesia

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sticking this collection at the beginning of the series compilation because it'll be all over the place. Pairings/POV/continuity clues will be in each chapter's individual summary.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, childhood, set between Aliens and Bully in Just Like Old Times  
> Word meme ficlet: Gargalesthesia: the sensation caused by tickling

“ _Mom_ , the baby won’t leave me _alone_!”

Garrus raced down the hall to his mother’s workroom, trailed by the giggling baby. Ever since she learned to walk, he was stuck with her _all the time_. She always wanted to be where he was, and she kept breaking his best toys, and she could barely even talk but she always made noise, especially when he was trying to think about stuff or work on things.

“You’re the big brother, dear one,” his mother said, catching him under the arms and swinging him up and around in a giddy circle he was far too old to admit enjoying. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with her.”

She bent her head to nuzzle his face and he swallowed his laugh when her mandibles tickled. Hitching him onto one hip, she grinned down at him and walked soft fingers down his side until he was practically squirming with the held-in laughter.

“Mom!”

Her fingers paused. “Want me to stop?”

A little laugh bubbled up and he let it escape. “No!”

But before she could continue her tickling attack, Solana, still babbling at the top of her lungs, toddled into the room and promptly fell down. Garrus braced himself for the keening, but his baby sister only rolled onto her back and giggled at the ceiling, arms and legs flung wide. Ugh. Babies. They didn’t even make _sense_. With him still held on one hip, his mom was already halfway to her side, cooing and whispering the sweet little words that used to be just his.

She dropped to the floor next to Solana, shifting him to her lap. At least she didn’t put him _beside_ her. Ever since the baby came, she got most of the attention and almost all the snuggling.

“Ma, Ma, Ma,” Solana screamed delightedly. “Ga, Ga, Ga! Hi!”

“Spirits save me from early walkers,” his mother murmured, reaching for Solana’s little feet and brushing her tickling touch over them. 

Solana shrieked, because she was a _baby_ and babies didn’t know about being tough and trying not to laugh every single time anyone even came near them. But his mom laughed, too, and… and it _was_ pretty funny seeing the baby rolling around on the floor laughing and laughing. Garrus, still enclosed in his mother’s arms, leaned forward and tried a little tickle of his own.

“Ga, Ga, Ga!” Solana screeched. She clambered unsteadily to her feet and launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck. “Ga, Ga, Ga, hi!”

Their mother hugged them both tightly, somehow managing to cuddle them at the same time, when Garrus said, “Wait, Mom. Wait. Are _you_ ticklish, Mom?”

His mom froze. “I am not.” But her voice was laughing, and when he tickled at her sides she twitched.

“Ma!” Solana cried, going for the other side.

“Oh, no! Turned on by my own children! Spirits save me!”

This time Garrus didn’t try to hold in his happy laughter, and when their mom finally promised them a giant portion of dulcia for dessert, they let her go. Solana, still laughing, dropped herself into Garrus’ lap and rested her cheek against his chest. It seemed like the big brotherly thing to do to hug her back. A little bit, anyway.

He didn’t even feel jealous when his mother reached down and made sure to brush the tops of _both_ their heads with gentle fingers.

“See,” his mother said softly, “sometimes it’s not so bad, having a little sister. You certainly ganged up on your poor old mom.”

“I guess,” he said, giving Solana a little _, tiny_ nuzzle. “Maybe she’s not _so_ bad. For a baby.”

“Gawa,” Solana said, snaking her arms around him and squeezing as hard as she could, which wasn’t very hard at all, but he _was_ her big brother and he could always teach her to be stronger later.


	2. Quiet Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solana Vakarian/Naxus Vakarian, Pre-ME1, Solana POV  
> (Verb meme, Quiet Me, one character soothing another)

Solana’s door gave an indignant beep that let her know someone was on the other side and coming in whether she wanted them to or not. It was time enough to grab her pistol and drop to one knee behind the scanty cover the hotel room’s shabby desk offered. Her head throbbed with the worst hangover in recent memory—and there’d been a  _lot_ of pretty monumental hangovers of late—but she forced herself to focus. It would be just her luck, taking one step forward only to end up the victim of some botched robbery gone wrong. The ignominious end of Solana Vakarian. The gun shook. Well. Her hand shook. Also thanks to the hangover.

Naxus nearly got his head blown off when he came barreling around the corner, and only the fact that she recognized his voice shouting her name stopped her finger from pulling the trigger.

“Spirits, Naxus!” she snapped. “How about a knock next time? Or a message? You know, so I don’t  _kill you_ by mistake?”

Whatever she was expecting, it wasn’t a cry of relief and Naxus on his knees beside her, wrapping her in strong arms, keening as he embraced her with the desperation of the drowning. A mess of conflicting feelings tumbled around in her head, temporarily displacing the hangover headache. But the hug lasted only a moment, and before she could even lift her arms to return the gesture he pulled back, sitting down hard, loose-limbed like a broken string-puppet. Every exhale came accompanied by the low whine of grief and fear in his subharmonics.

“Naxus,” she said quietly, setting her gun aside and reaching toward him with a tentative hand, “are you—is everything okay?”

He swatted her hand away before she could touch him. Stung, she curled her fingers against her chest, half-affronted and half-protective. Entirely uncertain.

“Am I okay, she asks. Am I okay?” Mandibles flared, eyes wide, he scrabbled away from her until the back of his cowl hit the wall. Curling into himself, he buried his head in his hands, every breath catching raggedly on its apex. She’d known him for years, he’d been her best friend for  _years_ , and she’d never seen him upset like this. He was the calm one, the reasonable one, the steady one. Looking at him now, shaking and shattered, she realized she’d always taken it for granted. “You don’t even know, do you? You don’t even remember. Am I  _okay_?” Lifting his head again, he brought his palms down to the floor beside his hips. Hard. She winced in sympathy, but he didn’t appear to notice the pain. “No, Solana, I am not  _fucking okay._ ”

“Naxus,” she began again, haltingly. “I’m—sorry. I—whatever it is, I—”

His omni-tool flared to orange life and after a moment of angry searching he turned his arm so she could read the message he’d found. She got a couple of sentences in before the memory came rushing back on a flood of alcohol-drenched shame. Her tongue tasted of phantom drugs, though she knew the E82 had been out of her system for hours. It had all seemed so hopeless, sitting in Chora’s Den, a dozen drinks in and knowing there wasn’t enough booze in the world to drown out what she was running from.  _Maybe it’s time to stop running,_  she’d written. With numerous typos. _Sorry, Naxus. Sorry. It’s not you. You’ve been a better friend than I ever deserved. It’ll be better, you’ll see, Naxus. I’m just an anchor. Just an anchor. Naxus. You’ll be okay. You’ll be better without me._

“Oh,” she breathed, hardly loud enough to give the word voice. “Spirits.”

“And then, even though you spelled my name wrong  _twice_ , you managed to delay the delivery? What the hell, Solana.”

“I… think I… didn’t want to wake you up. I know you never set your messages to silent. It was, uh. It was so late.”

“You didn’t want me to stop you, you mean,” he growled, eyes sharp, missing nothing. Her mandibles twitched miserably.

“Probably that too,” she admitted, sinking into herself in horror. “I’m so—I—”

“Don’t apologize!” The omni-tool dimmed again, and he curled his hands into fists he rested against his thighs. “No more  _apologies_.” He took a deep breath, and this one didn’t catch. “This is—I’ve  _tried_ —this is a line you’ve crossed, Sol. I have to report it.”

She nodded. Shook her head. Nodded again. “You don’t have to.”

He stiffened, not yet rising to his feet but straightening his shoulders and lifting his chin. At least he wasn’t keening anymore. At least he wasn’t shaking.  _What were you thinking, Vakarian? What the hell were you going to do to him?_ “You know I do. Our superiors will overlook a lot as long as you’re pulling your weight and showing up for your shifts, but this—this? I—Sol. I don’t know what to do about this. I—”

She held up a hand to forestall him. “That’s not what I mean. I—I didn’t remember sending that message, and I didn’t, uh, you know. Do anything. Someone at Chora’s Den called C-Sec on me last night. Drunk and disorderly. It was, uh. Bad. I guess.”

“Oh. Your dad?”

“No! Spirits, no. I don’t think we’d be having this conversation if my dad had been the one to show up. My brother was the Vakarian on duty. I was awful to him. Like I’ve been awful to you. Like I’ve been awful to everyone.” She pulled her bent knees up and wrapped her arms around them. It was cold comfort. She didn’t look away from him, though; she owed him that much. “He wasn’t awful to me. Like you haven’t been awful to me. So when I left his place this morning, the first thing I did was request a leave. I need to get some help. I know I need to get some help. I’m going back to Palaven. To stay, I think. They’ll have a place for me in R&D. It’s where they wanted to put me in the first place, I think. My mom’s fine now, but that’ll change. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not. I—I think I should be there. So. I requested a leave. And I need to get some help.”

He nodded, quiet now. Solemn. He scratched at the side of his neck and then stopped abruptly, as if realizing he’d caught himself betraying his nervousness. “I’ll miss you. At my six.” His shrug deflated him, made him look small and sad. “Not just at my six. I’ll… miss you.”

She blinked at him, not quite able to contain the hitch in her own subharmonics as she said, “You’ll—I mean, you’ll visit, right? Your family’s there. This is—it doesn’t have to be goodbye, does it?”

His gaze was so intent, so searching, she almost ducked her head, afraid of what he’d find, what he’d see. “Can I—would you—may I visit  _you_?” He looked away first, tilting his head in embarrassment. “That’s—I know your family’s superior and it’s not a—it’s hardly equal footing and I—Spirits. Shit. I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget I said anything.”

She grabbed his hand, quick before she lost her nerve, and squeezed it tightly. He wasn’t visibly shaking anymore, but she could feel the aftershocks of trembling in his digits. This time he didn’t pull away, didn’t push her away. His fingers closed just as tightly around hers.

“Visit me,” she said. “Please. I’d like that. I’d love it. Visit me.”

“Okay,” he replied, and maybe it wasn’t okay  _yet_ , but for the first time in a long time, Solana let herself believe  _okay_ was somewhere she’d get to see.


	3. Monkey Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set ME1, Shepard POV

Shepard splashed around the mine-shaft, knee-deep in grimy water, while the obnoxious little monkey kept just out of her reach.

"This is what my life has become," Shepard said mournfully. "Chasing monkeys for Alliance Command. Because nothing says  _matter of galactic importance_  like thieving little monkey bastards. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. I don’t even think it’s all that hidden.”

"Don’t forget the part where you lost the Mako, ma’am," Williams quipped, slogging behind Shepard, her heavier armor making accordingly heavier splashes and sending the skittish simians scattering.

"I didn’t  _lose_ —”

"We were there, Shepard," Tali reminded her. "We all know what happened."

"I temporarily misplaced the Mako." Shepard lunged forward, catching the monkey only to find that like the previous billion monkeys it, too, was module-less. "I just got… turned around."

"You wanted that gold deposit," Ashley said. "And you got so excited you forgot which impossibly steep mountainside you’d parked the Mako on."

"Fifteen minutes out of our way. At most."

"An hour," Tali said. "I timed it."

"Gold is  _heavy_ , Commander.”

"And I said I’d buy you pretty new armor with the profits. I think that’s a fair trade. Now, if you two could kindly shut up and help me corner that last—shit. You just stay put, Chief. You’re the source of a minor tsunami with every step."

"Ouch."

"Well," Tali mused, "she’s not exactly wrong."

Shepard stood perfectly still while Tali herded the last of the creatures toward her. At the last moment, she reached out and caught the beast in her hands. It squirmed, twisting with more strength than Shepard had anticipated. It also held the module, though it took no small amount of effort to wrestle it from the monkey’s grippy little hands.  _No, this is my life,_ Shepard amended silently.  _Arm-wrestling thieving little monkey bastards for Alliance Command. They never talk about this glamor in the recruitment vids._  

Tali whooped, Ash threw a triumphant fist in the air, and Shepard was forced to chuck the wriggling simian across the room before it could puncture her gloves with its awful little teeth. It meeped pathetically.

"Was that necessary, ma’am?"

"Not strictly," Shepard retorted. "But I’m going to tell you, it felt oddly satisfying. Now let’s get the hell out of here before some other shit hits the fan."

"Or before you forget where we parked," Tali said, in a not-very-quiet stage whisper. "Again."


	4. On Kissing Turians (Pt. 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set ME1, Garrus POV

"Commander? Uh. Are you… under there?"

A muffled noise emerges from underneath the Mako’s carriage. Garrus crouches down, tilting sideways until he can, yes, see that the body belonging to the feet sticking out does belong to Commander Shepard. “Garrus. Just… you know, routine inspection.”

He pulls his mandibles close to his cheeks, a little affronted and trying not to show it. “Has there been something wrong with my work, Commander? The suspension needs to be calibrated, but it’ll be groundworthy by the time we hit Feros.”

"Feros," she mutters. "Right.  _The mission._  No, your work’s exemplary. I just…”

"She’s hiding," comes Williams’ voice from the other side of the hold. She strolls over, smiling easily, and hunkers down beside Garrus.

"I might be hiding," the commander admits, toying with a wrench he really hopes she’s not actually planning to  _use_  on anything.

"Hiding?" Garrus asks, baffled enough to sit back hard on his haunches. "From what? You’re the commanding officer. If someone—"

Shepard’s groan and Williams’ laugh mirror each other. “There can be no signal-sending from under the Mako,” Shepard insists. “Mixed or otherwise. To say nothing of awkward conversations about alien mating rituals or… dissections? I don’t even know. So I’m going to stay under the Mako for a while. And inspect. Routinely. And not talk to anyone else. Because God only knows what’ll come out next.”

"You could always rethink kissing turians," Williams says, her grin growing even wider.

"I could rethink court-martialing you for gross insubordination," Shepard replies. Garrus is pretty sure she’s joking. Hopes she is. Seems extreme.

He also wonders, just a little, when the commander was  _thinking_  about kissing turians, if  _re_ thinking is on the agenda. He rubs the side of his neck.

"It’s all right, ma’am," Williams says. "We all know you’re holding out for Wrex."

The thrown wrench catches Williams square in the gut, and she falls backward. Still laughing. Only louder.

Humans, Garrus thinks. He’ll never understand them.


	5. Tropical Vacations for Everyone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ME1, Shepard POV

"What do you  _do_ with all this stuff, ma'am?"

"Mmm?" Shepard murmured, fixated on tackling the encryption on the crate. Her skills were generally quite good, but the slightest distraction at the wrong moment could completely throw her off her game, and she  _hated_ having to resort to omni-gel. Felt too much like failure.

The lock gave a pleasing little beep and the door slid open, revealing a cache of top-grade weaponry. Shepard smiled. Grinned, really. A little feral, if she was being honest. Hell of a stash to leave lying around where anyone with, y'know, expert level hacking skills might find it. Not that she felt entirely sorry. Better she had the guns than the mercs, when push came to shove. "Sorry, what was that, Ash?"

Ashley peered over her shoulder, letting out a low whistle of appreciation. "Don't suppose _you_ need that Tsunami, do you, ma'am? Assault rifle's not _really_ your style."

"Do I detect a hint of lust, Williams?"

Tali's bright laugh echoed behind them. "Only a hint? Better see the doctor about your hearing when we get back, Shepard."

"You're indifferent to the Avalanche, then?" Shepard returned, with equal humor. "Because I could always see if Wrex--"

Tali darted past Shepard and hugged the shotgun to her chest, and this time everyone laughed. Ashley swapped out her older model Banshee with a pleased sigh, changing over her mods with practiced ease. Once her task was complete, she lifted her chin and repeated, "I only wondered what you do with all this stuff we, uh, find. I've seen you break some of it down to omni-gel--" Shepard scowled; she only did it when necessary, and always with a faint air of disgust "--but mostly you cart it all back to the ship at the end of a mission. I know I don't see most of it again; I just wondered what happened to it all."

Shepard shrugged, one eye on her HUD's radar. With no hostiles in the area, she scanned the room for any more crates or weapons lockers. Or one of the malfunctioning objects she ran into so often--maintenance crews all over the galaxy ought to be ashamed of themselves, really. Spotting something promising in the far corner, she spoke as she strolled. "I sell them."

"Sell them?" Ashley repeated. "But--really?"

Shepard lifted a shoulder in an easy shrug. "Sure. My requisitions officer's got to earn his keep." Shepard chuckled at the affront skittering across her gunnery chief's expressive face. "Hell, Williams, if I was relying on the Alliance or the Council to fund our mission and supply our equipment, we'd still be running around with standard-issue Hahne-Kedar--pardon my language--shit. So we swap for better gear when we can, sell the rest, buy what we can't scavenge, and everyone stands to make a tidy profit when I divy the balance up at the end of the run."

"Shepard," Tali said, voice mixed with wonder and a touch of dismay, with maybe--just maybe--a little greedy lust of her own, "that's so... mercenary."

Shepard laughed again. "You don't  _have_ to take your percent of the credits. Someone else'll be happy to collect your share, I'm sure."

Sometimes it was hard to read Tali without facial expressions to give her emotions away, but Shepard was starting to understand the language of bobs and dips and toe-tip bounces. Excitement came through loud and clear. "I didn't say that."

"Just... how much money are we talking here, Skipper?"

Shepard's eyes narrowed, crinkling with amused delight. "Current balance is sitting around two million."

"Two million  _credits_?" Tali gasped, half-stumbling over her own feet in an uncharacteristically graceless move. "Two  _million_?"

"And the gear we just picked up's probably going to add another thirty thousand to the pot. Give or take." Shepard dropped her fist onto the top of the malfunctioning crate and the hatch sprang open, revealing a handful of top-quality but ultimately redundant mods. "Make that fifty."

"Keelah. _Keelah._ "

"Tropical vacations for everyone," Shepard agreed. Her HUD flashed out a warning, and a series of little red dots fanned out across her radar. "But not quite yet. Heads up, ladies. We've got hostiles incoming."

"Keelah," Tali repeated a third time, even as the new Avalanche obediently took out one of the mercs stupid enough to run headlong toward it.


	6. Amuse Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard, Kaidan and Ashley, ME1, Kaidan POV  
> (Verb meme: Amuse Me, one character amusing another)

Commander Shepard came strolling around the corner, and Kaidan was already halfway to his feet, Ashley a second behind him, before she waved them back to their seats. He squinted in the dim light of the mess. She was carrying—were they—they  _couldn’t_  be—

“Found them in one of the lockers,” the commander said, twirling the pair of  _ping-pong_  paddles, one in each hand. “Was hoping for cards, but—” She shrugged. “Next time we swing past the Citadel, maybe. In the meantime, either of you soldiers up for a match?”

“Of… ping-pong, ma’am?” Ashley asked, not quite able to mask the confusion.

“Sure,” the commander declared. Her sweeping gesture took in the table. “Across the width for an easy game, or length for a more challenging one.”

Kaidan cleared his throat. He and Ashley exchanged glances. When he looked back at the commander, her brows were lifted in silent question and he said, “We’re on the hunt for a rogue Spectre and, uh, you want to play ping-pong, Commander?”

Her eyes narrowed. Not angrily; more like she was trying to size him up. Make sense of something. He’d noticed the look before; Commander Shepard didn’t like  _not knowing_. She was good at figuring people out; he’d witnessed it firsthand on more than one occasion. He felt strangely pleased that he wasn’t quite yet an open book to her. “Pretty sure Saren’s not going to show up in the next hour,” she said reasonably. “And downtime’s important.”

“Fair enough, Commander,” he replied.

She flipped one of the paddles to him and he caught it out of the air easily.

“Just Shepard’ll do fine, Kaidan. Especially during that aforementioned downtime.” She smirked. “We’re all equals over the ping-pong table.”

“Until I win,” he returned, with just a hint of swagger, testing the waters. Instead of reprimanding him, Shepard chuckled and nodded, seemingly approving. He felt strangely pleased about that, too.

Ashley grinned and jabbed an elbow into his ribs. “Big talk, Alenko. You got skills to back them up?”

“Guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”

Six matches and countless shared anecdotes in—two wins apiece, though Kaidan was pretty sure Shepard wasn’t actually bringing her A-game—Joker’s voice came over the comm. “You wanted to know when we were thirty minutes out of Virmire, Commander.”

“Thanks, Joker.” She tilted a lopsided smile their way. “Right then. Suit up. It’s all hands on deck for this one.” She pointed her paddle at Kaidan with a mock-menacing glare. “Rematch later. This time Williams is going to be on biotics watch. I don’t think that last shot was entirely aboveboard, Alenko. Little too much  _lift_ , if you know what I mean.”

Ashley lobbed a companionable punch his way, but he ducked out of the way, laughing as they headed to the lockers.


	7. Apodyopsis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard POV Shepard/Garrus, set ME2, before any talks of reach and flexibility.  
> Word meme ficlet. Apodyopsis: The act of mentally undressing someone.

It started innocently enough.

At first, when Shepard couldn’t stop staring at Garrus, she told herself it was only natural, since nobody—not even stubborn, smart-ass turians—just  _bounced back_  from taking a rocket to the side of their head. She’d thought she was going to lose him again almost as soon as she’d found him; a little paranoid hyper-vigilance was to be expected. She was just watching out for a member of her team, making sure he was as healthy as he claimed to be. But Dr. Chakwas did good work, the surgery held, he stopped making jokes about his face barely holding together, and Shepard let herself believe she’d be allowed to keep his familiar face at her six after all.

It stood to rights that she could stop staring, then. But… she didn’t.

The armor, she told herself. She was still getting used to the new armor. It was so much bulkier than the lighter gear he’d worn when they first met. She found herself cataloguing individual pieces, mentally remarking on what was the same (very little) and what was different (nearly everything). Even without taking into consideration the mess of ruined plate on the right side of his cowl, the armor was fascinating to her. Who, she wondered, had designed the gold symbol he wore on his right arm? What exactly did it mean? Had the added bulk been adopted to foster a more looming silhouette, as much a mental trick as a physical one? Beneath the armor, were his shoulders as broad as she remembered? Was his tapered turian waist as impossibly narrow?

She found herself glad he still wore blue. Brought out the color of his eyes and the shade of his markings—

Shepard blinked and heat rose in her cheeks when she realized she’d somehow gone from _nice armor_  to  _nice eyes_  without consciously thinking about it. Mid-firefight was no time to wax poetic, no matter how pretty a blue those eyes were. She shook her head, peering through her scope and taking out a pair of FENRIS mechs with perfectly placed mechanical-dog-head headshots.  _Focus, Shepard._

It didn’t work. Like floodgates being opened, thinking  _nice eyes_  somehow started a completely inappropriate train of thought that only ended when Garrus shouted something about an YMIR mech about to explode and Shepard ducked behind the not-quite-adequate cover of a pile of nearby crates.

When the dust cleared, her scanner was clear and Garrus stood over her, offering a hand to help her up.

 _My,_  she thought,  _what big hands you have. What_ do _they look like under those ever-present gloves, I wonder?_

Long fingers closed around her wrist and half-hauled her back to her feet. She extricated her hand under the pretense of brushing herself off, but mostly because, even gloved, the feel of his hand had set off a string of tiny land mines beneath her skin.

This kind of thing had  _never_  happened before she died.

_Yes, Commander Shepard, consummate professional. Killed for the second time because she was daydreaming about what her turian looks like under his armor instead of, you know, killing the things trying to kill her._

“Something wrong, Shepard?” Garrus asked, all genuine concern.

_I’m remembering a very vivid spread from that issue of Fornax I bought on a whim._

“You’re,” he waved in the vicinity of his own cheeks, even though—damn him—he didn’t blush like she did, “uh, pink.” He tapped his visor. “And your vitals are a bit abnormal.”

_Oh, just wondering how little a gap would be left between my reaching fingers if I tried to wrap them around your waist. Huh. I bet your hands could encircle my waist completely. And then you could hoist me—_

Shepard coughed, scrubbing at her face and only making things worse. The dust on her hands made her eyes water. “Fine. I mean, I’m fine.”

_Shit. I am not fine. Abort. Abort. Mission control to Shepard: do not think about Garrus Vakarian’s eyes. Or hands. Especially do not wonder about the texture of his_ _—_ _argh._

He tilted his head, his mandibles fluttering in that particular way that spoke of worry he was never insubordinate enough to voice. “You sure? That last one was kind of close. Didn’t you hear me? Maybe you should swing by the medbay when we get back. Let the doc take a look. What is it you always say? Better safe than sorry?”

“Mmm,” she agreed, ears still ringing, traitorous brain fixated on the strength of Garrus’ hands.  _I bet he could just—_  “Nothing a cold shower won’t cure.”

Garrus chuckled, still a little uneasy. “If you say so, Shepard.” Had she ever noticed how much she liked his laugh before? It never failed to put a smile on her face. Hell, she was smiling now. Possibly maniacally. And she couldn’t seem to make herself  _stop._

A future of cold showers stretched out before her.

“If you assholes are finished flirting, can we get back to the ship? I’m fucking  _covered_  in mech.”

Shepard’s laugh emerged far too high-pitched. Jack and Garrus both looked at her like they feared for her sanity. Maybe they were right to. “After you,” she said, gesturing back the way they’d come.

Which, as it happened, turned out to be the worst kind of tactical error, since she was then forced to make the entire trip to the shuttle staring at Garrus’ ass and wondering if that Fornax had been right about other body parts that might, beneath the armor, bring out the color of Garrus’ eyes.


	8. Coffee With Extra Cream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A glimpse of Mother's Days, past and present. Shepard at 6, 17, and during ME2.

“I can do it all by myself,” she said, glaring over her shoulder at her hovering papa. He grinned and held his hands up as if to prove he wasn’t going to use them to mess up her plans. “Don’t touch anything.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sweet pea,” he replied. “You just let me know if there’s anything you need me to do.”

She nibbled at her bottom lip, thinking. She didn’t want her papa to feel left out. “Okay,” she relented. “You can make the coffee. Put extra cream. You never put enough. She likes _lots._ Okay? _Lots._ ”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” he replied, heading for the coffee maker. “Extra cream it is.”

“Use the yellow cup,” she added, hopping down from the step stool that let her reach the counter. “It’s her favorite.”

She padded to the kitchen door and let herself out into the garden. The dew was cool against her bare feet, dampening the hem of her pink-flowered nightgown. She hardly noticed; she was busy holding her breath, hoping against hope the flowers wouldn’t let her down. Disappointment stopped her in her tracks when she peered at her mama’s rosebush and saw only green leaves, and she bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from crying stupid baby tears. A moment later, a brisk breeze ruffled the leaves, and revealed the single, light pink rose hidden beneath them, and her almost-tears turned into a triumphant giggle. Careful of the thorns, she used her dull kid-scissors to saw through the rose’s stem. 

By the time she returned to the kitchen, prize in hand, her papa had already put the yellow mug on the tray. She left damp footprints on the floor as she crossed the room, and her slippery feet almost made her fall, but she caught herself, clutching the rose hard in her hand. Taking a deep breath, she steadied herself, clambered onto her step stool, and placed the single rose in the glass of water she’d already prepared. Her thumb was bleeding from one of the thorns, and she stuck it in her mouth as she surveyed her handiwork. It was only cereal and toast, because she wasn’t allowed to use the stove by herself, but the cereal had fresh berries on it, the toast was dripping with her mama’s favorite blackberry jam, and her papa had put just the right amount of cream in the coffee.

“Okay,” she said. “Ready, Papa. You carry it.”

“You sure? Because you told me not to touch anything, and I wouldn’t want to get in trouble with the boss.”

She rolled her eyes, waving an imperious hand at the tray, and her papa laughed as he jumped to do her bidding. She stopped outside her mama’s closed bedroom door, though, suddenly uncertain. “Papa? Is she gonna like it?”

“Nah,” he replied. She turned her head, wide-eyed and stomach sinking, to see her papa grinning. “Sweetheart, she’s going to _love_ it. Best Mother’s Day she’s ever had, I guarantee it.”

Later, curled up tight against her mama’s side, Papa’s arm around them both as he sang _wiiiild Irish Rose_ , the remains of the breakfast tray pushed to the end of the bed but the pale pink rose tucked behind her mama’s ear, she thought maybe maybe it was one of the best days _she’d_ ever had, too.

#

She didn’t remember much about the first Mother’s Day after… _after._ She’d still been really messed up, still waking up screaming almost every night, still dreaming of blood and bubbling paint and smoke, her hand still marked by scabs where she’d bitten herself to keep from crying out and giving herself away as the raiders passed too close to her treetop hiding place. Truthfully, she’d had no idea where she was, let alone _when_ , and by the time she was cleared to the custody of the Callahans it had been well into June. 

“My, aren’t you lucky?” the stupid social worker had said. “They’re practically royalty.” So desperate had she been to get out of the care facility and prove she was _better_ , she’d swallowed her acid retort about luck and her obvious lack of it. A lucky girl wouldn’t have been on Mindoir at all. A lucky girl wouldn’t have lost her entire family in one fell swoop. Now she wished she _had_ spat those words in the social worker’s face. Maybe they’d have kept her longer. Maybe she’d never have come to stay with the Callahans at all.

This year—the first with Moira Callahan starring in the new role of _foster mother_ and, more importantly, _orphan rescuer_ —she’d been primped and prepared and prettied until she hardly recognized herself in the mirror, before being bundled into a chauffeured car to meet her very busy and very important foster mother for brunch at the most exclusive restaurant in town. She’d considered begging her driver to take her somewhere— _anywhere_ —else, but couldn’t gather the nerve. He smiled down at her when he opened the door, and she forced herself to return the gesture. His expression faltered. “You okay?” he asked.

_You okay?_

It would have been so easy—so _true_ —to just say _no._ But she didn’t want him to get in trouble with the Callahans, and so she tried to make her smile less sickly, and said, “Fine, thank you.”

She saw the moment he realized why she _wasn’t_ okay, and with tenderness that somehow only made it worse, he said, “It’s only an hour. She has an appointment, and you know she never misses an appointment. Especially one that might get her face on the vids.” His free hand turned over in a helpless gesture. “I’ll take you home the long way later, if you want.”

“Thank you,” she repeated, with more feeling.

A tuxedo-garbed maitre d’ greeted her a little coolly as the door opened, but when she said her name, the landscape of his face changed in an instant. She took a faltering half-step backward when he practically bowed and he guided her to the table himself instead of sending one of his underlings in his stead. The table was empty; of course she’d beaten Mrs. Callahan here. She’d probably planned it that way. No one loved an entrance more than Moira Callahan.

She sat when the maitre d’ pulled out her chair, forcing a thankful smile she didn’t quite feel onto her face as a waiter laid a snowy white napkin across her equally-snowy lap. The extranet said it took a _year_ to get reservations at this place, which seemed _ridiculous_ for a meal, no matter how good the chef was reported to be. A second waiter presented her with a gilt-edged menu. No prices on it. Of course. She thanked him and set it down without looking too carefully; Mrs. Callahan would doubtless order for the both of them anyway. 

A clamor at the door alerted the entirety of the restaurant to Mrs. Callahan’s arrival. Pretending to admire the ornate centerpiece of flowers, she watched Mrs. Callahan work the crowd. The woman wove amongst the tables seemingly at random, but nearly every one she passed stopped her for a word or a handshake or a laugh. She watched them like a critic watching a play, determined to find fault. Her stomach growled. 

“So sorry to keep you waiting, darling,” Mrs. Callahan said, bending toward her to press kisses into the air near her cheeks. The scent of her perfume washed over her, floral and too sweet. She didn’t sound sorry, and as she rose out of the greeting and glanced out over the restaurant, the shine of triumph in her eyes was all too recognizable. “I certainly didn’t expect to see so many familiar faces. One can never rest, I suppose.”

“Shouldn’t Nicholas be here?”

She knew they were the wrong words as soon as she said them. She didn’t even need the warning look and the icy smile Mrs. Callahan sent her way. “My son is taking me for dinner later.” Mrs. Callahan put on her sad face. Her _feel sorry for me because look how hard I’m trying to feel sorry for you_ face. “I knew how hard this day would be for you. I thought it would be nicer, just us girls.”

_And a restaurant filled to capacity, of course. To say nothing of that reporter taking your picture. And mine._

Mrs. Callahan settled into her chair like a queen. She didn’t thank any of her battalion of helpful waiters. When the third tried to give her a menu, she waved a hand and said, “Tell Eduardo I’ll have my usual. And two coffees, black. Miss Shepard will have an egg white omelet. No cheese, please. One must watch one’s figure.” This last bit she said while looking across the table, the huge flowered centerpiece doing nothing to camouflage Mrs. Callahan’s conspiratorial smile. “An attractive figure is a weapon, darling. Never forget that.”

She nodded gravely, as if Mrs. Callahan had imparted some great universal truth, and wondered if her driver’s _long way home_ might include a stop for coffee with double cream and a cheeseburger the size of her head. Maybe ice cream. Mrs. Callahan waved the waiter away like she’d have waved a fly out of her face, and turned as some Very Important Person approached, desperate to speak with her of the weather… and to meet her pet orphan, of course. Wasn’t it sad, what had happened on Mindoir? Wasn’t it just the saddest thing you’d ever heard? How _do_ you manage? Oh, darling, I’d have _died_. I’d just have _died._

She rubbed the faint scars on the back of her hand in the shape of her own teeth, and tried to remember the exact cadence of her mother’s voice saying _I love you_ instead of the sound of doomed colonists screaming as they died. As they just _died._

#

Gardner’s creations were exceptionally hit and miss, but even the least recognizable of his meals was better than a ration bar choked down while sitting alone in her too-large cabin, filing threadbare mission reports to a too-wrong authority. It wasn’t always possible, but Shepard tried to catch a meal or two a day in the mess, always rotating her appearances so she’d have the chance to catch up with different crew members. Winning over the Cerberus lot wasn’t easy. Oh, she trusted them to follow her orders and do their jobs, but walls of reserve painted in Cerberus colors were hard to scale, and _polite_ wasn’t _loyal_.

On this occasion, however, the mess was almost entirely empty. Grunt sat alone at one of the tables, half-bent over a bowl of noodles almost as big as his head. She chuckled, and added a stop for groceries to her mental checklist. Doubtless Cerberus logistics hadn’t accounted for a krogan appetite. Especially when the krogan appetite was obsessed with ramen.

Grunt looked up when she sat down opposite him, his expression sliding swiftly from irritation to something that, if not expressly _friendly_ at least wasn’t murderous. Her own lips tilted into a lopsided smile as the lack of mess hall company began to make sense. 

“Shepard.”

“Grunt.” She took a bite of her meal.  She was pretty sure she couldn’t have named a single one of the ingredients and the texture was decidedly odd, but at least it tasted good. “Good to see you out of the hold.”

He slurped a vast mouthful of noodles and followed the display with one of the krogan smiles she’d probably have found terrifying if she’d never had the opportunity to get used to them on Wrex’s scarred face. “Kelly said there were noodles.”

“‘Kelly said’?” Shepard repeated mildly, lifting his words into a question. “And does the yeoman visit you often?”

“Ehh,” Grunt replied noncommittally. “She likes to talk.”

“Mmm,” Shepard said. “If you’d rather she left you alone, I can have a word with her.”

“She’s okay. I’m telling her about the rachni wars. Better than talking about _feelings_. Humans.” Grunt lifted a hand. She recognized the dismissive wave as one of her own gestures, and she had to swallow an abrupt laugh because it looked so ridiculous applied by his massive paw. Choking on the laugh, however, also made her choke on the mouthful of food she’d just begun chewing.

“You okay, Shepard?” 

Funny, she thought, blinking at him through tear-blurred eyes, to see such genuine concern on his face.

“Fine,” she coughed. “Swallowed wrong.”

As she’d been trying not to die by Gardner Surprise, Shepard had missed Jack’s arrival. The biotic stomped—Shepard didn’t think the woman had a mode of transportation other than stomping in her arsenal—across the mess and slammed a coffee mug down at Shepard’s right hand. The creamy liquid sloshed over the side and Shepard took a swig to clear the last of the cough from her throat. Surprise followed; Jack had prepared it with exactly the amount of cream Shepard preferred. Before she could thank her, Jack moved around the other side of the table, glowering.

“Asshole,” Jack muttered, throwing herself into the seat next to Grunt’s with precisely _none_ of the trepidation shown by any other member of the _Normandy_ ’s crew around him, nursing her own cup of (black) coffee. “Gardner says you ate all of the fucking ramen _again._ ”

“Heh,” Grunt replied, somehow combining the single syllable into a reply half-laugh and half-apology. With a shamefaced look Shepard was sure she’d _never_ seen on _any_ krogan’s face before, Grunt pushed the half-full bowl of noodles toward the woman sitting next to him. 

Jack blinked at him, and for a second Shepard saw the girl Jack had never had the chance to be, young and surprised and maybe—just a little—touched. Of course, a scowl darkened her face before Shepard could even begin to name that first expression for what it was. “Fine,” Jack said. “But if I catch some fucking krogan disease, I’m gonna beat the shit out of you.”

“You could try,” Grunt said, again with that big krogan grin. Jack snorted, lifting a hand, flipping Grunt the finger, and then adding a little blue biotic glow for emphasis.

“Now, now, kids,” Shepard said, with mock disapproval and a genuine smile. “Not at the table.”

“Fuck you, Mom,” Jack retorted, shifting the direction of her hand.

Instead of reprimanding her, Shepard only chuckled and lifted her mug, drinking deeply of the perfect coffee, remembering, for some unfathomable reason, the scent of a pale pink rose and the sound of a man’s voice lifted in song.


	9. Drink Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus ME2, after Samara's loyalty mission  
> (Verb meme: Drink Me, one character drinks with another)

“Thought I’d find you here.”

Shepard turned, glancing over her shoulder. Garrus stood behind her in the empty lounge, neither too close nor too far. A distance, she realized, calculated to put her at ease. A word and he’d either leave or come closer. He was leaving it up to her. No pressure. His careful considerateness would’ve made her smile any other time.

She didn’t deserve him. Especially after—

Her gut twisted with the sick, oily feeling that had pervaded since Morinth—since the last mission. Liquor wasn’t drowning it. Maybe companionship would. Especially if it came with a side of confession. Much as she dreaded it. Much as she’d been avoiding it.

“There’s some kind of turian brandy back there,” she said, waving her own glass in the bar’s direction. A little of her own drink sloshed over the lip of the tumbler. She ignored it. Plenty more where that came from.

This was invitation enough, as she’d known it would be. With deceptively casual grace that did nothing to disguise the concern in his expression, Garrus crossed to the bar and rescued the bottle in question. He hummed a low, appreciative noise. “Haven’t had this since the last time I was on Palaven,” he said, pouring a healthy quantity into a glass before sliding into the seat next to hers. Not too close. Not too far, either. “You would not believe what a bottle like this would go for back home.”

She made a face. “And here I thought the Illusive Man skimped on the dextro supplies. Does it taste as bad as it smells?”

He chuckled. “Worse, if you can believe it. Part of the charm.”

He tipped his glass toward her and waited until she lifted her own. The clink of crystal was too delicate a sound. Morinth had crystal glasses. Morinth had—

She shuddered. Drank.

“Want to talk about it?” Garrus asked. She knew he didn’t mean the brandy. The oily feeling slunk from her gut to her throat. Those black eyes. She hadn’t been able to look away. Hadn’t wanted to, in the end. Garrus’ eyes were clear and blue and watching her with such compassion she could hardly stand it.

“No,” she said. And then, more reluctantly, “Yes. I don’t know. I wish I could say it was a blur, but it’s not. If anything, it’s all too clear. The club. The… lure. The apartment. Her.” Shepard tossed back the rest of her drink in a gulp, and though it burned the whole way down, she still felt cold. Those eyes. That voice.  _I want you. I’d kill for you. Anything you want._  She swallowed hard, not drunk enough to blame the thickness of her tongue or the taste of bile in her throat on the booze. “She’d have had me, if Samara hadn’t come. I couldn’t resist. I wanted to. And then… and then I didn’t. Want to.”

The oily feeling slid all the way to her fingertips. And down to her toes. Shame, maybe. Humiliation. Dread. It was so damned  _cold._

Garrus didn’t actually drink. He pushed his glass around with the tip of one talon. “That’s the thing with bait. It’s pretty damned helpless when it’s dangling there at the end of the line.”

Instead of filling her glass again, she laid her hands flat on the bar. She’d had a scar near the thumb of her right hand, before, courtesy of an incident with a kitchen knife. Even her hangnails were gone. She could feel her Cerberus upgrades breaking down the liquor already, rendering it harmless and her sober.  _Anything you want._ Her eyes burned. The unblemished skin blurred.

She cleared her throat. “I’ll understand if you’re not… if you don’t want to… you know. The things we talked about before.”

Allowing herself a swift look, she found him blinking at her in obvious confusion. “The things we—oh.” His mandibles flicked. Agitated? Concerned? Angry? She couldn’t quite tell. “Do  _you_  not want to?”

Without hesitation, she replied, “I want to.”

“Then, as far as I’m concerned, nothing’s changed.”

His hand and hers were separated by less than an inch. Throwing caution to the wind, she closed the distance, grasping his long fingers and giving them a desperate squeeze. Instead of pulling away as she’d half-feared he would, he shifted his hand until their fingers were entwined. Five fingers and three made for interesting positioning, but she found she liked the feeling. She liked it very much.

“Another drink?” he asked, low and inviting. Genuine.

“With you?” The warmth of Garrus’ hand in hers finally banished a little of the persistent cold, and at last the oily feeling began to retreat. “Always, Vakarian.”


	10. Love Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, Shepard POV, post-ME2, before Arrival  
> (Verb meme: Love Me, a fluffy drabble)

It wasn’t like the vids.

And, yes, of course she’d watched vids. Not just the clinical and rather sterile tab-A-slot-B ones Mordin had sent up, either. There’d been other vids. Ones with bad music and extremely aerodynamically-unfeasible ladies and… well, she didn’t know how to judge the endowment of turians, but some of those ones had been positively  _ridiculous_. She’d had EDI wipe her extranet search history eight times and swear herself to secrecy after the host of searching she’d occasionally done late at night instead of probing for minerals.

She cleared her throat.

Maybe probing wasn’t the right word. Under the circumstances.

Or. Oh, dear. Maybe it  _was_.

At least her cheeks couldn’t blush any hotter. They’d reached a sort of steady state somewhere between surface of the sun and fires of hell as soon as the undressing started happening. And she wasn’t even shy. It was just—

It was all fun and games and sentiment when it was forehead touches and pleading for things to go right. That—emotion? Real emotion?—she knew what to do with. She knew it. She  _felt_  it. It was… it was all the rest of it she wasn’t adequately prepared for. Even with the vids. Of varying types.

With his clothes off, Garrus was vaguely human-male- _shaped_ , but he was not a human male. The warnings about chafing started to make a lot more sense. All the, uh, plates. And talons, though they appeared to be filed down and therefore not human-skin-shreddingly sharp, thank God. And feet that, out of their usual boots, looked even more like dinosaur feet than she was anticipating. He was so lean. And so… pointy.

_With dinosaur feet._

Perhaps a couple solid glasses of the wine he’d brought wouldn’t be a bad idea after all, but she wasn’t about to drink herself tipsy a few hours before one of the most important missions of her life, awkwardness or no awkwardness, Cerberus implants or no Cerberus implants.

She wondered how soft and squishy and breakable she looked to him. And if he was thinking about pyjak feet. Or gelatinous hanar. Or  _worse_.

Garrus, perched on the end of her bed looking at least as uncomfortable as she felt, gestured broadly, taking them both in. His mandibles twitched in that way she’d come to understand meant he was confused. Maybe a little upset. But hiding it. Wanting her to be comfortable, with the wine she shouldn’t drink and the music meant for a dance club. “Is this too weird?”

“No,” she replied without hesitation.

_Yeah, kinda_ , she thought.  _Just once_ _,_  he’d said. He watched her carefully; she felt the intensity of his scrutiny as she turned away and shed the last scraps of her own clothing. Pointy bits and differences and chafing and all, she wanted that something right, too. “No,” she repeated, believing it this time. “Just different.” When she was as naked as he, she sat next to him, edging close enough for her bare thigh to brush his bare thigh. It wasn’t human skin, but it was pleasantly warm, cords of muscle visible under the silvery plates and the darker tan of his hide.

She wanted to touch him. It was the strangest thing. She went from burning-cheeks-awkward to burning-cheeks-lust in about three seconds flat, wooed by the closeness of his thigh. She asked a question with her raised eyebrows. He nodded, and she reached out slowly, running first her fingertips down his leg, and then the flats of her fingers, and then her palms. Then she drew her hand back to her lap and smiled up at him. “Your turn,” she said.

“Anywhere?”

“Sky’s the limit.”

He chuckled; the first real laugh she’d gotten out of him since he walked in the door. It made something settle in her stomach, and she tilted forward until her lips brushed his mandible. “That means anywhere, in the language of human idioms.”

He chose her spine, touching tentatively enough to tickle. She couldn’t stop her laughter from bubbling forth, and he drew back. “Bad?”

Shaking her head, she wrapped his hand in both of hers and squeezed reassuringly. “Sensitive. And too soft. You’re hitting laughter instead of lust, as buttons go.”

“That won’t do,” he murmured, just low and gravelly enough to send the last thoughts of giggling off in a skitter of firing nerve endings and  _more of that, more of that right now, don’t you_ dare  _think about stopping that._  With just enough pressure to make her squirm, his fingers retraced her spine, caressing each vertebra like it was a gift. She arched a little, and he redoubled his efforts, both hands roaming the plane of her back, dragging sparks of heat across her ribs. The way he hesitated before touching her waist made a few of those bits of Mordin-vid and turian-porn-vid fall into place and she hummed, pleased. Her hypothesis was proven correct when her turn rolled around and the touch of her fingers and scrape of her nails and the flat of her tongue applied to  _his_  waist drew sounds from him she hadn’t known he could make.

And, oh, she wanted to pull those sounds from him again and again and _again_.

They were positively  _delightful_.

They were, she realized,  _something entirely right_.

It wasn’t like the vids, no. More awkwardness. More hesitation. Her knee in a place a knee shouldn’t have gone; his elbow clocking her on the side of the head hard enough to make her see stars other than the ones racing by above their heads.

It wasn’t like the vids at all. But as she gasped his name and he cried hers, in every way that counted? It was better. Beyond better. 


	11. Ayurnamat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solana POV, Solana/Naxus (sorta kinda), before Something Like Home  
> Word meme ficlet: Ayurnamat: the philosophy that there is no point in worrying about things that cannot be changed.

“It’s fine,” she says, a little too loudly, reaching for the bottle of too-sweet liquor. Naxus doesn’t stop her, but he doesn’t pour himself a drink either. He’s been nursing the same glass for hours, as she steadily drinks and drinks and drinks. “They’ll find a cure.” Naxus nods, but doesn’t speak. He’s never been good at lying, especially to her; they both know what his subharmonics will say and neither of them actually wants to hear it. “Spirits, she’s  _Niva Vakarian_. They’re not going to let Niva Vakarian’s memory turn to mush. They’ll fix it. They have to fix it.”

Her own subvocals waver in a way she doesn’t want to draw attention to, so she downs her glass in one go.

Strange how something so sweet can burn so hot.

#

“No!” she shouts, and the shout is followed by the shatter of another glass against the wall. The last one, more’s the pity. She could start on plates next. Naxus hardly looks at her as he crosses the room and begins gathering the shards. “Spirits,  _leave it!_  I don’t need you cleaning up my damned messes, Naxus! I can do it myself. Hell, I’m  _used_  to doing everything myself, aren’t I? I’m a regular housemaid meets nurse. Solana Vakarian, look at her now!”

“Sol,” he says, glancing over his shoulder, his hands full of glinting glass, “you have every right—”

“To what? To be pissed? To wonder where the hell my father is, my brother? She didn’t recognize me yesterday. Not once. ‘Where’s Garrus?’ she asked. ‘Where’s my sweet boy?’ You know how many times? Do you have any idea?”

“Thirteen,” he whispers. “One for every glass you’ve thrown at the wall.”

Her breath catches. Her hands ache to break more things. “I didn’t train for this.”

“No one does,” he replies, and she realizes his palms are bleeding and he hasn’t once complained.

#

“We have money,” she insists. “She’s—don’t you understand? She’s Niva Vakarian. She works—used to work for—she’s the one who  _invented_  the— _don’t you understand_?”

The doctor settles a hand on Solana’s shoulder, and she wants to shrug it off or use it to flip him into a choke hold or drop to her knees under the pressure and plead, if pleading could help. “The treatments aren’t working the way we hoped. I’ve got a colleague on the Citadel who’s working on a drug trial, and the salarians appear to be making some progress, although it’s very expen—”

“Please,” Solana interrupts. “Just… whatever it takes. Whatever you’ve got. Whomever you know. Please. We’ll—I’ll do anything. I’ll try anything. Please.”

#

She turns off her messaging. Nothing from Garrus, no surprise there, and the things Naxus says hurt as much as the things he doesn’t. He means well, she knows. He’s too kind, and she doesn’t deserve it. She’s not the one who’s dying, slowly and horribly, lost memory by lost memory. She’s just the one complaining about it. He doesn’t ever tell her to stop complaining, though. He just listens, takes it all in. He says, “The primarch is family. Let me talk to him.” He says, “Sol, you don’t have to do this alone.” 

But she does. Her father comes and goes, never staying for long, always busy, his eyes so haunted she hates when he’s home anyway. Her damned brother is still off the grid, doing whatever it is he’s doing that’s more important than being here, than doing this. She thinks she’d probably hate him for it, if she could muster any feeling at all. 

Through the wall, she can hear her mother keening. Keening means it’s a good day, actually. Keening means her mother remembers everything she’s losing. Except her; her mother doesn’t remember her at all anymore. She talks and talks about her daughter Solana, but never recognizes her.

Solana doesn’t even bother with a glass; she drinks straight from the bottle. When it drops from her numb fingers it hits the floor and tips over, filling the room with cloying alcohol scent. She should care but she doesn’t, and all the booze she’s drunk already isn’t enough to drown out the sound of her mother losing everything over and over and over again in the next room over.

 _Let it end_ , she thinks because she is a horrible daughter, a horrible person,  _let it end, let it end. Spirits, let it end._

#

Aneurysms, the primarch’s doctors say. A network of aneurysms. Too many experimental treatments, too many unknown interactions. Too many side-effects. There’s nothing more we can do. 

Make her comfortable, they say. That’s all that remains.

They don’t tell them to enjoy her last days. Even they cannot bring themselves to be so trite, so full of hopeless platitudes.

The words fall into dead silence, and Solana watches her father age decades in the space of a dozen heartbeats. She does what he cannot: she rises, makes the appropriate gestures, thanks the sad-voiced doctors. She doesn’t think about anything except what needs to be done: equipment to order, more belongings to sell to cover the astronomical expense of keeping her mother home instead of in some horrible sterile ward of some horrible sterile hospital. Another desperate message to send to her absent brother. The time for complaints and broken glassware is over. So is the time for hope. There’s something curiously reassuring about it, really, though she’d never speak the words aloud. It’s all settled. She knows now what she has to do.

“Come on, Dad,” she says, offering his arm. He takes it. Leans a little against her. “It’s okay. I’ll take care of everything.”


	12. Brontide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaius Vakarian, set during Something Like Home  
> Word Meme ficlet based on the word brontide: the low rumbling of distant thunder.

It will happen soon.

He has had months to prepare, years, and still he is not ready.

Solana is in with Niva now, tirelessly playing nurse since daughter is a role her mother no longer acknowledges. That memory has been gone for months. Down the hall, in his childhood room, Garrus sleeps the deep sleep of an exhausted soldier who knows rest is always in short supply and must take what little he can when the opportunity arises.

Even apart from the devastating scars, Kaius does not recognize his son. The weariness is new. Alarming. In two years, Garrus has aged twenty.

This, at least, Kaius understands all too well. He has aged forty. He sees an old man in the mirror now, tired and slow. It is no wonder his wife does not recognize him. He does not recognize himself.

He cannot remember the last time his entire family was gathered under this roof. Niva would know. Niva would have known. Before. Kaius has an excellent memory for certain kinds of details; even now, he can picture crime scenes and interrogations from his past, and recall the exact method he’d used to file his reports. Niva was the one who remembered important dates and anniversaries and occasions. Hers were the gentle reminders pulling him from worlds of broken laws and criminals back into a universe where children had birthdays and holidays required observing.

He stands at the door to her garden for a long time, one hand splayed against the glass, his head bowed over his outstretched arm.

When the door opens, instantly overwhelming him with the familiar scent of the flowers Niva loves—loved—loves, Kaius forces himself to enter. The path is overgrown. It has been too long since she was able to tend this place, and he does not have the touch. His hands are used to death; they are not tender enough to coax delicate blossoms from the unforgiving earth as hers are. Were.

The glass walls of the enclosed garden are sturdy, but do not completely silence the low rumble of thunder in the distance. Dark clouds blot out the sun as the storm bears down. It will happen soon. Summer storms always do, in this part of the world. He’d fallen in love with Niva during a summer rainstorm, a thousand years ago when they were young, because she’d laughed and thrown her head back instead of running for cover when the rain started.

He picks a velara fruit from the tree his wife has tended from a sapling. He dislikes the fruit at the best of times, and this one is bruised and overripe. Even worse.

 _Nutritious_ , though, his wife’s voice chides him, just as she used to do before.  _You need to keep your strength up, dearest. We both know the worst is yet to come._

Rain begins to fall against the glass, sudden and pounding, just as he’d known it would. Lightning crackles above, momentarily illuminating the garden. He imagines Niva’s arms flung wide, her sweet voice laughing as she embraced the downpour instead of fleeing from it.

Slowly, bite by bite, bruise by bruise, he eats the fruit.

It will happen soon. Tonight, perhaps, or tomorrow. He will sit until the storm is done, and then he will return to her side, his hands still smelling of the fruit she loves. Perhaps it will coax a smile from her, though she won’t remember why.

He has had months to prepare. Years. And still, still he is not ready.


	13. A Good Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solana/Naxus, takes place during Something Like Home/Just Like Old Times, while Garrus is still on Palaven organizing the Reaper resistance. Naxus is a distant relation of the primarch's, Garrus' second-in-command, and Solana's best-friend-turned-more.  
> Solana POV

 “He’s an idiot, you know,” Solana groused, aggressively flipping through files on her omni-tool. “Smart as hell, but an idiot.”

“Solana,” Naxus said. She glanced over her shoulder just long enough to see him poke his head out of the kitchen. He glowered at her. The expression was rendered somewhat less severe by the flowered towel flung over his shoulder and the presence of a spoon in his hand. Whatever he was making smelled delicious.

“Well, he is,” she protested. “He’s never known how to pick his battles. Trying to get the primarch to shift on this is like standing in front of a tidal wave and asking it politely not to pull you off your feet and banish you to the depths of the ocean. I know he doesn’t want to hear it—”

“Solana.”

“And he won’t listen to me if I try, but he pretty much _has_ to listen to you—”

“Solana.”

“I’m forwarding you some of the intel I’ve pulled off—” Solana stuttered to a stop when Naxus slipped close behind her, sliding his arms around her waist and bringing the side of his face down to nuzzle hers. He’d put the spoon down, but still smelled of whatever he was cooking. Distracted, she inhaled deeply. Skota, maybe. Spirits. She hadn’t had good skota in years. Not since—no. She wasn’t ready to think about that. Not yet. It was still too close, too painful, too tied to seeing her mother fade and disappear completely.

“Solana,” he repeated, gently this time, the word like a caress. “Please. Enough about your brother.”

She sighed, letting her omni-tool’s interface vanish. “I’m worried.”

“I know.”

“I was so angry with him for so long, and now? Watching what he’s doing? I just—”

“Solana.”

“You carry this… this weight, you know? Old wounds and grievances and resentment, and it grows and grows and grows. What are you supposed to do when something throws that into question? What are you supposed to think when—”

“Solana.”

“I’m doing it again.”

“You’re doing it again.”

She closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “All of this, it’s… dangerous. Beyond dangerous.”

“The worthwhile things usually are.”

“Danger is worse when you feel like you’ve got something to lose.”

Naxus made a little thrumming noise of agreement deep in his throat. “Do you remember that time we got separated from the squad on that batarian raid?”

She snorted, even as her mandibles flicked into a little smile. “We were so green. It took three days to break down the code they were using to jam sensors and communications.”

“And another three to get word to the ship that we weren’t actually dead.”

“And three more after that before they could send a rescue team to pick us up.” She turned in his arms until they were face to face, and brought her arms up to curl around his neck. “Why don’t we ever take nice vacations like that any more, Naxus?”

He chuckled, his nimble fingers drawing maddening patterns against the sensitive flesh at her waist. “We killed so many of those batarian bastards. Now _they_ were idiots. You’d think they’d have learned after we took out the first dozen.”

“Or the second.”

“Or when you rigged that explosive out of—I don’t even remember. Something innocuous.”

“The best explosives start out as something innocuous. I think that one was omni-gel and lighter fluid from one of the dead batarians. Smoking. Disgusting habit. Handy for blowing things up, though.”

“And you packed it with shrapnel.”

She smirked. “Mustn’t forget the shrapnel.”

He buried his face against the side of her neck, finding the spot that always made her shiver. “Remind me never to get on your bad side,” he murmured. “You’re devious. If we were talking about him—which we’re not—I’d say it’s a wonder your brother survived your wrath.”

She laughed. “Yeah, well. He’s devious, too. For an idiot.”

“I thought I was going to lose you on that raid,” he said, his subharmonics resonating with such feeling it unnerved her to think too hard about it. Danger was _definitely_ worse when you had something to lose. “When that one lucky—or unlucky—shot got you in the shoulder.”

“I was fine.”

“You were delirious with infection.”

“I was slightly compromised.”

“I had to restrain you so you wouldn’t follow through on your threat to challenge the batarian commander to a duel.”

“I made a couple of questionable tactical decisions.”

His hands left her waist, but only to pull her into an even closer embrace. His hand cupped the back of her head tenderly.

“Fine,” she mumbled against his chest, “you’ve made your point. My brother may not be the only idiot in the family.”

“That wasn’t my point.”

She tilted her head back to give him a skeptical look, and he smiled down at her, saying, “We make a good team. That’s my point.”

“Except in the kitchen,” she said. “You don’t want me in there.”

“I leave the cooking up of explosives and incomprehensible tech in your capable hands. Anything required to be edible is mine.”

Her mandibles twitched, and Naxus pressed his brow to hers briefly, whispering, “You’re thinking about how to make explosives out of food, aren’t you?”

“You’re right,” she said. “We make an excellent team. Dinner?”

“Half an hour.” He bent his head, finding her neck’s shiver-spot again.

“Excellent.” She ducked out from the circle of his arms, grabbed his hand, and tugged him toward the bedroom. “We’ll make it dessert then.”

He laughed, and didn’t protest.

That was one of the things she loved best about Naxus, really.

He always knew the value of a good plan.


	14. Mourn Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, Shepard POV, ME3 before Menae  
> (Verb meme: Mourn Me, one character mourning another)

Shepard tells herself she’s fine.

Sure, she sees the Vancouver skyline destroyed in less time than it usually takes her to have a good shower. Sure, she watches Earth fade to a faint blue dot and she feels the unpleasant certainty in her gut that nothing will ever be the same, all mixed up with the even more unpleasant certainty she’s left Anderson there to die.

Sure, she sees that doomed, damned kid in her dreams. Over and over and over. Running away from her. Dying. Running. Dying.

But she’s fine.

She’s fine on Earth and she’s fine on Mars and she’s fine when the fucking Council turns their backs on her  _again_ , their dismissal barely polite and so short-sighted it’s all she can do to keep from screaming. She knows she’s fine because she thinks about knocking all their heads together but doesn’t actually do it. She’s even fine when she stands in the silence of Kaidan’s hospital room and sees the mess that Cerberus machine made of him. She’s fine when she brushes off Liara’s concern; she’s fine when Traynor, bright-eyed and enthusiastic, runs through the various and sundry modifications made to the ship— _her ship_ —in her absence and without her permission. ( _You did give it to them,_  says a voice in her head.  _You’re not really allowed to complain._ )

Maybe she’s a little sharper than usual, maybe she’s a little grimmer, maybe she feels the hairline fractures forming, but nothing’s broken yet and she’s Commander fucking Shepard. She’s got no time for being anything less than fine.

She sends fifty messages, a hundred, all to the same address. They bounce back undelivered or unread. ( _Because he’s dead_ , says that annoying voice.  _You know he’s dead. Lie to yourself all you want. Doesn’t change the facts. Come on, Shepard. You know how war works._ ) She orders Joker to set a course to the Apien Crest—if Sparatus wants the primarch, she’ll get him the fucking primarch; errand girl to the galaxy why the fuck not—and sends another. This time on a secured channel, Spectre status authorized. If anything can get through, this message can. It’s a little abuse of power, maybe; she can’t bring herself to care. Hundreds ( _maybe thousands, probably thousands_ ) of people are dying from one end of the galaxy to the other with every breath she takes, with every blink of her eyelids. Gone. Gone. Gone. Logically, she knows she can’t afford to care about one life; logically, she knows the chances any of them will survive are slim to none. Logic can fuck itself. Her message says:  _W_ _e’re coming. Don’t be dead._

She starts her rounds because she’s fine, and fine means talking to people. Fine means soothing ruffled feathers and making sure everyone’s good to go. Fine means asking seemingly-insignificant questions in search of very-significant answers. Fine means hand-holding and pep talks.

Fine means when Jimmy Vega asks her to dance she agrees with an affable smile and a  _you don’t know what you’re in for_ laugh.

She knows how good she is; he, on the other hand, has no idea. He still underestimates her; she can see it in his eyes. Poor bastard. Normally she’d give a first-timer a pass, a get-out-of-broken-nose free card, even a couple of potshots. Let them see her human. Go easy. Build a little confidence. ( _Not Garrus_ , says that goddamned traitorous voice in the back of her head that loves to kick her when she’s down,  _you never went easy on Garrus. He never needed you to. You appreciated that. Loved it, even. Loved—_ )

Because the voice is pissing her off, she hits Vega harder than she has to. Draws blood. Knows she should stop. Doesn’t. Pushes. Gives him nothing. He’s confused; she can see that in his eyes too, and written all over his bloody face as they circle each other. Doesn’t back down, though; she has to give him that much.  _Cojones_ , as he’d say. Kid’s got cojones.

When she flips him hard and lays him out flat, she realizes she isn’t fine.

Swallowing hard, she helps him up. Lets him call her by some ridiculous nickname she’d never have stood for otherwise.

Flees.

Cortez calls out a greeting as she passes, but she only lifts a hand to wave because she’s not fine and she can’t talk. She’s never been more relieved than she is when the elevator door closes and she’s left alone and no one interrupts her ride up to her cabin. She checks her messages. The last one has bounced back. Again.  _Undeliverable._ Her hand closes into a fist, still sore from her bout with Vega. Her throat aches. Her eyes burn.

She stands in the shower for a long, long time, head bowed, and tells herself it’s just the sting of the hot spray on her face and not tears. She’s a good liar. She almost believes it, and she’s the one doing the crying.

_Running_ , she thinks.  _Dying._

She’s not fine. She’s not fine at all.


	15. Get Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard and her hamster, ME3, Shepard/Garrus
> 
> (Verb prompt meme: get me, one character saving another)

“Oh no you don’t!”

Shepard lunged, falling hard enough on one knee to bruise, but managing to catch Odysseus in her cupped hands before the hamster tumbled off the desk. He squeaked—indignant or grateful, she wasn’t sure—and she lifted the fuzzy, squirmy body so she could give him a stern glare he’d just ignore anyway. Furry little smart-ass.

“Look,” she said, “I know you had some kind of grand  _Normandy_  adventure those months I was gone, but this has got to stop.”

Odysseus wriggled his nose, whiskers twitching, defiance in his beady black eyes.

“How about this,” she added soothingly, stroking his soft head with one fingertip. “You stop with the escape attempts, and I’ll let you ride around in my pocket next time I’m doing rounds.”

“Uh, Shepard?” Garrus asked from the other side of the room, voice still gravelly and rough with sleep. “It’s a  _rodent_. I don’t think rodents understand the concept of bargaining.”

The rodent in question took advantage of this moment of distraction to chomp on the meat of her finger, drawing blood. She yelped, dropped him, and by the time she shook off the pain of the attack, he was gone. Garrus chuckled.

“You laugh now,” Shepard said, glowering, “but see how funny it is when you’ve been crawling around the ducts on your hands and knees for six hours. Garrus Vakarian, Hamster Recovery Unit. Has a nice ring, don’t you think?”

The laugh became a groan, and Shepard smiled, triumphant.


	16. Gargalesthesia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, Garrus/Shepard, set early in ME3  
> Word meme ficlet: Gargalesthesia: the sensation caused by tickling.

Human hair, Garrus discovered quite by accident, was not only soft and malleable and intriguingly colored. It was also an incredibly effective torture device. When first he’d had occasion to get up close and personal with Shepard’s hair, just before the Omega-4 Relay, the strands had been too short to be used for their most devious purpose. Now, however, months later, with Shepard’s hair falling in waves past her shoulders on the rare occasions it was released from the tail she usually kept it in, it was something else entirely.

He discovered his weakness one evening fairly early after his return to the  _Normandy_. He was sitting on Shepard’s couch, poring over yet another report out of Palaven it made him sick to read. He heard Shepard enter before he saw her, and, by the time she leapt down the steps into the main living area, her hair was already loose and the jacket of her dress blues already discarded.

She leaned down to press a kiss to the top of his fringe, and the fall of her hair brushed against his crest. Garrus swallowed the completely inappropriate laughter and stiffened to keep from even more inappropriately twitching away. Shepard pulled back and dropped to a crouch beside him, her brow furrowed in a truly intense expression of human concern. “Sorry,” she said. “I should’ve asked. I—it’s okay if you’re not—I shouldn’t have assumed.”

He tilted his head, for a moment as genuinely confused as she looked concerned. “Sorry? For what? You can’t help—”

Slump-shouldered and already shaking her head, she insisted, “It was inapp—”

“Whoa,” he interrupted. “No. It was your hair.”

She blinked at him. Then her lips twitched. “My hair.”

“It’s—I—it wasn’t long before. It didn’t—” he wiggled his fingers vaguely.

“Garrus Vakarian,” she intoned with mock gravity, eyes shining and crinkled at the corners, “Reaper Advisor to the Turian Hierarchy, vigilante badass of Omega, slayer of Saren Arterius—”

“Don’t say it.”

“Is  _ticklish_?”

“I will deny it with my dying breath.”

She grinned and her breathy little laugh was the closest thing to unfettered mirth he’d witnessed since everything went so perfectly and decidedly to hell.

“Is it just your crest?” The light in her eyes reminded him extremely uncomfortably of Mordin, when the salarian was fixated on an idea in need of experimentation. She ran a hand through her hair and stared at the ends with new fascination. “What about your neck? Oh, your waist. Your waist  _has_  to be ticklish.”

“ _Shepard_.”

Leaning forward, she kissed his cheek. A moment later, she slid onto his lap. And while he was distracted by soft lips and softer curves and the inexplicably inviting Shepard scent of her, she ran searching, nimble fingers down his sides and up under the hem of his tunic. Light fingers.  _Tickling_  fingers. He made a choking sound in the back of his throat. “Oh my God,” she whispered, low and sultry, her lips impossibly erotic against his neck, “I am going to abuse this new development unmercifully.”

Embarrassing or not, torture or not,  _Spirits_ , he was going to let her.


	17. Grapholagnia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard POV, Garrus/Shepard, set during ME3 during the period when Wrex is still aboard the ship.  
> Word meme ficlet: Grapholagnia: The urge to stare at obscene pictures.

Garrus could be too damned quiet when he wanted to be. Which was how Shepard justified him sneaking up on her. It definitely wasn’t because she was… distracted. Although. She had been  _really_  quite distracted. Harbinger could probably have blared his way into her cabin and she might not have looked up until he was laser-blasting her into atoms.

“Hey, I was looking for y—are you looking at pictures of naked  _krogan_?”

Instead of playing it cool, brushing it off, laughing, she made the critical tactical error of blushing redder than her hair and throwing the Fornax across the room, where it lay in a crumpled heap, open on a particularly, uh,  _vivid_  spread.

Pun… intended.

She reached for an excuse, an explanation,  _anything,_  but her usually-quick wit completely abandoned her, leaving her gaping stupidly up at her very confused boyfriend. Just confused? Annoyed? Unhappy? …Pissed? “I, um. Joker—”

Wait, was it amusement in his subvocals when he said, “I’m not buying that, Shepard.”? Because she could work with amusement. Amusement was in every way superior to pissed off and  _we need to talk_.

“It’s, uh… not what you think.”

“Really?” He settled himself casually—too casually—against the wall next to her desk, folding his arms over his chest and  _staring_. Very intensely. Her blush turned up another ten degrees and she longed for a fortuitous hull breach. It didn’t happen. She didn’t want to think what kind of insight his damned visor was giving him. His voice lowered, turning gravelly. Ugh. He  _knew_  what the gravelly voice did to her. Not fair. At  _all._  “What  _do_  I think?”

She hung her head. “I… okay, the thing is, Wrex referred to—”

“Wrex,” Garrus muttered. Was he—surely he wasn’t  _jealous_. Garrus didn’t  _do_  jealous. And Wrex? Shepard shook her head mutely as her brain decided this would be an appropriate time to completely short out, but Garrus only added in an undertone whose subharmonics she couldn’t read,“Wily old bastard.”

Shepard sucked in a horrified inhale. “No. Whoa.  _No_. I just… wanted…” She shrugged helplessly. “It was research. Curiosity. Just I, uh, didn’t think the thing he mentioned was physically possible.”

“And was it?” Oh, Garrus was  _definitely_ laughing at her now. Wrex had probably warned him. Wrex had probably arranged the whole damned thing. This would be his idea of funny. Or of, uh, war-time stress relief, maybe. She wouldn’t put it past him. Wily old bastard indeed.

“According to page 42, yes. If the magazine’s to be believed.”

“Right. Page 42.” With a particularly inscrutable look, Garrus added, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not criticizing your choice of pastime. We all need time and methods to… blow off steam. What I really want to know, Shepard, is how you feel about page 34.”

That hadn’t been the one with the, uh, exceptionally flexible asari, had it? No. The quarian who somehow made environmental suits the height of appealing? Probably not. The, um, grappling turians? “Page… 34?”

Garrus sauntered—and hell,  with those hips _no one_  could saunter like Garrus—across to the fallen Fornax. He flipped through it for a moment, and held page 34 up for her perusal.

She instantly took back the thing about wanting a hull breach. Now she just wanted an hour without interruptions. And a naked turian.  _Her_  naked turian. The turian currently smirking at her for all he was worth.

With a breeziness subharmonics would have given immediate lie to, she said, “I guess we could try page 34. You know. If you wanted.”

“Oh,” he growled,  _definitely gravelly,_ and already reaching for the seals on his armor, “I _want._ ”

This time the heat that rose had absolutely nothing to do with embarrassment, and she was grateful only a handful of buttons and a zipper or two stood between her and, mmm, an advanced course in the best uses of turian reach and human flexibility.

“Maybe it’s time to finally invest in a subscription,” Shepard murmured, doing a little sauntering of her own.

He chuckled as his last piece of armor hit the floor. “Only if you think we need two.”


	18. Only a Clown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ME3, Shepard POV, Shepard/Garrus.   
> Garrus does not like clowns.

Garrus made a choking sound deep in his throat, and Shepard turned on a heel, already reaching for her sidearm, afraid some enemy had, at last, infiltrated the Citadel itself. Garrus didn’t _make_ strange choking sounds for no good reason. However, instead of encroaching husks or a brute or, oh, a _banshee_ —it really was a horrible sound he’d made—she saw only a gaggle of refugee children, laughing and clapping. 

“What,” Garrus said with unmitigated dismay, “is _that?_ ”

Crossing her arms over her chest, she raised incredulous brows. “Uh, kids? _Happy_ kids? You know, for a change?”

Garrus’ mandibles flared wide, his gaze shifting slantwise toward the children. “Not the kids, Shepard. The… thing. That thing tormenting them.”

She looked again. It had warmed her heart so much to see children laughing instead of weeping in shell-shocked little huddles she hadn’t quite noticed _why_ they were doing so.

It wasn’t the most polished clown she’d ever seen. The curly wig looked to have begun its life as some kind of exotic dancer’s prop, and the red nose was no longer perfectly spherical, but the makeup—white paint and red mouth and expressive brows—was quite good. The clown wore a hideously ugly jumpsuit, not unlike the one that hung in her closet and kept reappearing no matter how many times she tried disposing of it. As the children watched, enraptured, the clown began juggling an apple, two differently sized balls, and what looked like a bundled up pair of socks. Shepard smiled.

“Why are you _smiling_?” Garrus asked. “How can you smile?” He shuddered. “Your… fuzzy eyebrows are strange enough without painting them on even darker. And that mouth. Shepard _why_ does it have that _mouth_?”

Her laughter caught her so off-guard she didn’t have a chance to swallow it before it came cackling out, loud enough to make a couple of bystanders turn to look. Garrus’ expression was some awful turian blend of hurt and horrified. “Garrus,” she soothed, “it’s only a clown.”

“A… clown? What the hell is a clown? A spirit sent to punish children?” His hand, she noticed, still rested on his pistol, and he never once took his watchful gaze from the performer. “What did they do to deserve it?”

“Are you completely failing to notice that they’re laughing?”

The juggling balls (and socks) disappeared, and the clown tossed the apple to one of the children. The boy who caught it he held the fruit in his two hands like it was the most precious gift he’d ever been given. A moment later, the clown launched launched into the traditional squirting-flower gag. The girl who took the bait spluttered as the water caught her in the face, before laughing even louder than her compatriots.

Garrus was not impressed. His hand closed spasmodically around the butt of his gun. “That creature just _attacked_ that child, Shepard!”

“It’s a gag,” she said. She put a hand on his forearm, and then gave a light pat. “It’s what they do. Physical humor and… and jokes and teasing. And juggling. It’s a performance. It’s _entertaining_ them.”

He glared for a long count of ten before muttering, “I don’t like it.”

She bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from bursting into fresh gales of laughter. “Yeah,” she said. “I might be picking up on that.”

She had to say this for the clown, though, as she dragged a still-wary Garrus in the opposite direction of the performer and his audience: her turian might hate the clown, but the children’s spirits weren’t the only ones it had managed to raise.


	19. Paint Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, ME3  
> (Verb meme: Paint Me, one character paints another. Sort of, in this case. Well, painting is talked about.)

When Shepard cleared her throat, Garrus glanced up from his work to find a package thrust abruptly under his nose. It was carefully wrapped in heavy blue paper and bound with gold ribbons. Some kind of decorative bow sat in the center, and he felt his stomach sink.

“It’s not my birthday,” he said.

“I know.”

“Is it one of those human holidays? I, uh, I didn’t know.”

Shepard smiled a lopsided smile he’d have pegged as nervous if it were creasing any other face. She jostled the package and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Can’t a girl give her boyfriend a present for no reason?”

And then she laughed. Nervously.  _Definitely_  nervously.

“Shepard, what’s—”

“Oh, just open it. It’s probably stupid.”

The large box was oddly heavy. Too big to be a mod. Not the right shape to be a gun. He turned it over in his hands, trying to make sense of it. He shook it once. The contents shifted back and forth, but gave him no clues. He glanced up in time to catch the fondness of Shepard’s expression. When he began to carefully peel back the paper, Shepard laughed a more genuine laugh. “You can rip it. Ripping the paper’s half the present.”

He flicked his mandibles skeptically, but had to admit there was something pleasing about the carnage of torn paper. He saved the bow. And the ribbons.

He wasn’t used to seeing her so anticipatory. Or anxious. She stared at the box on his lap as if staring could force it to open on its own. Mostly to tease her, he lifted the lid  _very slowly_ , and then he froze as he realized what the package contained. “Oh,” he said, speechless. She’d crammed the box full of art supplies. Pencils, different-sized pads of paper, a dozen brushes, three different collections of paints.

“I didn’t know how serious you were,” she explained, spreading her hands wide and shrugging helplessly. “You can tell me if you—”

“Shepard.” His voice cracked a little on the last syllable of her name; she didn’t appear to notice.

“I know the middle of the war’s probably no time for taking up a new hobby, but I passed this shop the last time we were on the Citadel, and if you were joking you don’t have to—”

“ _Shepard_ ,” he repeated, firmly enough to stop her mid-rush. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

She blinked at him, smiling with obvious pleasure, cheeks flushing a delicate shade of pink. Rose and cream. He could start there.

As projects went, capturing the exact shade of her delight was, he decided, a worthy one. Better than Reaper blood any day.


	20. Just What the Galaxy Needs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ME3, Garrus/Shepard, Garrus POV  
> A bit of Christmas-themed fluff :)

Garrus didn’t immediately let himself into the cabin, even though Shepard had told him he was welcome to come and go as he pleased. It still felt… presumptuous, somehow. When she didn’t answer the chime, though, and EDI informed him she was definitely inside and not sleeping, he tapped the opening mechanism. She sat at her desk, stacks of datapads to one side, her console lit up, and a long-cold cup of coffee at her elbow. If she hadn’t drunk her coffee, he knew damned well she hadn’t paused to eat.

He leaned against the wall behind her for a few moments, watching her work. Even here, in the privacy of her cabin, she was precise, methodical, no movement wasted, her focus absolute. She hummed under her breath, a little snatch of song he doubted she was aware of singing, and he smiled.

“Garrus,” she said, without turning around. Her fingers flew over the haptic interface, and her humming was replaced by a muttered curse. “Does the primarch need me for something? Running interference between him and Wrex again?”

“They’re abiding by their truce today.”

“Mmm. Good.” She lifted one of the datapads, sighed, and shifted it to a second pile. He couldn’t see it from his vantage, but the sigh wasn’t a good one.

“Joker’s wearing a hat.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“A red one. With white… fur. He keeps repeating the word  _ho_  and insisting he’s, uh,  _jolly_.”

“Mmm.” She didn’t even glance at him, merely shifting her head from one hand to the other, her shoulders obviously stiff from being bent over the console too long.

“A fat man in a red suit, Shepard? Really?”

This, at least, made her turn. Her brow furrowed and he didn’t think any of the confusion in her eyes was feigned. “What?”

“As myths go, this Santa Claus is a weird one. Joker says he flies? And breaks into houses? It all sounded very questionable.”

Her lips formed the words  _Santa Claus_  silently, and a little understanding lit her eyes, only to be followed by a visible wince as the pieces fell into place. “It’s not Christmas.” She glanced at the console and shook her head. “Shit. It’s absolutely Christmas.”

“It’s a significant day? This fat red-suited man day?”

She almost laughed. At least the corners of her mouth turned up. “It’s one of those days that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. A handful of other holidays all happen around the same time. Which I have doubtless also forgotten.”

“Not like you don’t have other things on your mind.”

She lifted a shoulder in a rather helpless shrug. “Still. I think I’ll go make my rounds. Wish people a happy holiday, at least. Should’ve done more.”

Garrus caught her wrist as she passed, and brought the back of her hand up to the side of his face, nuzzling the soft skin gently. She smiled, but none of the tension left her shoulders or the line of her back. “Mind if I ride down with you?”

She turned her wrist, twining her fingers with his. “Battery? Or war room?”

“Battery, I think. Actually, while I’ve got you, I was wondering if I could show you something in there.”

“Problem?”

“The array seems off. Thought I’d get a second opinion.”

She nodded, lips pursed, doubtless already mentally accounting for the time she’d need to divert his way. He hated having to ask for it.

In the elevator, she released his hand, but still stood close enough that their arms brushed, and the back of her hand touched the back of his. “No magical gift-giving fat men in turian mythology?”

He tilted his head and flared his mandibles so skeptically it actually did startle a laugh out of her. “Uh,” she amended, “how about fearsome turian warrior spirits who divide the spoils of their conquering justly amongst the worthy?”

Garrus snorted. “Closer. We don’t have holidays dedicated to the giving and receiving of gifts. Not like this, anyway. Birthdays, a little. Gift-giving is usually a more private affair. And not predetermined by the calendar.”

“Plenty of people would be on board with adopting the turian line of thinking,” she said. “But it’s not only gifts. Or, at least it’s not supposed to be. It’s about gratitude, too, and hope, and spending time with the people you care about.”

“So, just what the galaxy needs right now.”

Her smile turned soft, melancholy without being outright sad, as the elevator door opened onto the crew deck. He followed her out. “Hell, Vakarian. You’re not wrong. Maybe the next time we swing by the Citadel, I’ll arrange some leave—”

She stopped so abruptly as they turned the corner that he nearly walked into her back. He saw her surprise in the curve of her neck and the unsteady tremble of her knees, and he smiled.

The mess had been lovingly—if haphazardly—decorated. Garrus didn’t understand the meaning behind the colored streamers or the paper snowflakes, but he had to admit it looked cheerier than usual. The cords and wires were hardly noticeable. Someone had even found a string of colored lights, and they blinked brightly around the medbay windows. The human crew all burst into some prearranged song when they saw Shepard—something about wishing a Merry Christmas—and she put a hand to her chest. Her eyes shone, and he didn’t think it was just the twinkling of the unfamiliar lights.

“Oh,” she said, and it was all worth it to see the way the weight fell from her shoulders, the way the lines of her face softened, the way, just for a little while, she looked as young and hopeful as she had when he’d first met her.

“Hey, Commander,” Joker greeted, tossing his red hat to Garrus, who caught it deftly. “About time. We need you to carve the MREs.”

“Told you Joker had a hat,” Garrus said, settling the fuzzy cap on her head.

Shepard grinned up at him. “You appear to have left out some of the other details.”

“Surprise,” he murmured. “You get a present, too. Later.”

Her lips curved into a little smirk. A promising kind of smirk. His  _favorite_  kind of smirk. “Private?”

“The best gifts are.”

“In that case,” she said, adjusting the tilt of her hat to a jaunty angle and throwing him a wink, “I think that, even on such short notice, I can find something you’ll like, too.”


	21. Lalochezia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, set between Priority: Geth Dreadnought but before Priority: Rannoch, ME3  
> Word meme ficlet: Lalochezia: The use of abusive language to ease stress or relieve pain.

“Fuck!”

Maybe turians didn’t duck, but Garrus managed to lurch to the side just in time to avoid the model ship that that then exploded into a thousand fragments against the wall in the hallway outside Shepard’s cabin. The door behind him slid shut, hiding the carnage.

“Let me guess,” he said mildly, “that was the quarian ship?”

Shepard, shaking her hand out either because she’d launched the model with more force than she intended, or because it was her dominant hand and still hurting, glared at him, pink-cheeked with rage. “The goddamned quarians are lucky I only punched their fucking admiral in the stomach. I should’ve cracked his fucking face plate or shot a fucking hole in his suit. See how many allies you can try and kill when you’re up to your fucking eyeballs in antibiotics, you asshole!”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No,” she snarled. “I want to take a page from Javik’s book and throw every fucking quarian off my ship through the airlock. At speed. And then I want to shoot at them with your perfectly calibrated giant fucking gun.”

“Except Tali,” Garrus said.

He knew she was already far gone when, instead of chuckling, she only glowered in a way that said  _of course not Tali_. “I’d like to know how the hell Tali manages to stay even partly fucking sane if those are the fucking examples she had to look up to growing up. Hey, let’s play with live geth, that’s not dangerous at all. Oh, shit, now we’re all dead. I know, let’s wait until the galaxy’s on the brink of fucking war with a goddamned race of sentient ships bent on total annihilation to retake our fucking homeworld from the AI race we created and then royally fucked over. Because it’ll be so nice to see Rannoch again for the fifteen fucking minutes before the  _Reapers show up to kill us all._ ” Still flushed, she adopted a more obnoxious voice and pretended to talk to herself. He realized it was a very bad impression of Han’Garrel. “Oh, hey, you. You look nice. You look like the kind of moron who’ll go on a life-threatening mission into the fucking  _heart of enemy territory_  because we made a whole bunch of huge fucking mistakes and need someone else to clean them up for us. Yeah, you. The idiot with the fucking N7 on her chest and the  _bullseye_  painted on her back.”

Shepard jerked a thumb at her spine and stalked to the fish tank. Garrus crossed his arms over his chest and leaned casually against the wall, letting her vent, saying nothing.

“Say what you will,” she continued, voice shockingly loud in the contained space of her room, “at least Hackett’s never fucking  _shot at me_  while I was running his goddamned useless missions for him.”

Shepard wasn’t like Jack or Zaeed; she was usually exceptionally careful with her words, and rarely peppered her speech with strong invective. She had the longest fuse he’d ever personally witnessed—longer than his dad’s, longer than the primarch’s;  _maybe_  Thane or Samara might’ve been able to keep their cool longer,  _maybe._ This anger was new, and a bit startling, and, he suspected, not  _entirely_  the result of rage at the quarians. Too personal. Too wounded. He’d been on her comms while she made that long, slow, silent walk across the torn-up docking tube to the geth dreadnought. He’d listened to every single one of her ragged breaths as she stopped, looked the memory of her own death in the face again and again, and still forced herself to keep moving.

Han’Garrel was, indeed, an asshole. Garrus would’ve enjoyed punching the guy himself. Or taking out a knee; hard to make terrible life decisions affecting the whole of the galaxy when your knee was blown out. But the quarian admiral’s idiocy wasn’t the only thing going on with Shepard. Garrus suspected he might be the only one, however, who knew it.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that word quite so frequently,” he drawled. “You might want to work on your variety, Shepard.”

She gaped at him, temporarily as wide-mouthed and wordless as one of her fish. She took two steps toward him, hand closing into a fist at her side, but he didn’t back down. If she wanted to punch him, he could take it; with his armor and her bare hand, he was pretty sure she’d get the worst of it. Cybernetics or no cybernetics. “Are you fucking  _criticizing me_  for… for my choice of fucking  _expletives_ , Vakarian?”

“Mmm,” he agreed. “Two more. Even Jack mixes it up more than that.”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “You’re pushing your fuc—” She bit off the word part way and glared.

He smiled.

“Luck,” she finished. Lamely. Her shoulders sank. Her fist unclenched. And for a moment she looked very, very alone.

Crossing over to her, he held out a hand. After a minute she took it, and he led her to the couch. Rifling through her not-as-secret-as-she-thought stash, he found a mostly-full bottle of very strong liquor and poured her a healthy shot. Then he sat at her side, close enough for her to lean against him if she wanted to, not so near that physical contact was forced.

“You want me to teach you some turian ones?” he offered. “We’ve got a particularly choice expletive that basically means ‘he eats his own shit and likes the taste of it.’”

He managed to catch her just as she was taking a sip of her drink, and her sudden laugh sent a spray of liquor across the table and sent her into paroxysms of coughing. While still laughing. “You’re kidding me.”

He considered it something of a victory that she didn’t say  _you’re fucking kidding me._

“I’m not. And there are more where that came from. What we lack in curse words depicting bodily functions and sexual acts, we more than make up for with poetic creativity.”

Setting her glass down, she scrubbed at her face and took up the silent offer, settling her head against him. He put a comforting arm around her shoulders and gave her the briefest of squeezes. “He should not have shot at us while we were still on that ship,” she insisted, though the fire was gone now, leaving her sounding merely weary. Again.

“He shouldn’t have.”

“And I’m not sure I should’ve soloed that docking tube. I just… didn’t realize what would happen until I was already out there, frozen.”

“You unfroze. The mission was a success. That’s all that matters.”

Very softly, she said, “If it comes down to a choice, I think I’m going with the geth.”

He took a deep breath, swallowing his own uncertainty because she sure as hell didn’t need it added to the weight she already carried. “You talked the turians and the krogan into peace, Shepard. Maybe you can bandage up these old wounds, too.”

“Fuck,” she said, tilting her face up to shoot him a wry grin. “I hope so.”


	22. Duende

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, set in ME3  
> Word meme ficlet: Duende: Unusual power to attract or charm.
> 
> Prompter requested Lorca’s idea of duende, and so here’s an elucidating quote: “The duende, then, is a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought. I have heard an old maestro of the guitar say, ‘The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning this: it is not a question of ability, but of true, living style, of blood, of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation.”

In Shepard, death is an art and battle is her canvas. The paintings are never mediocre. She does not use two strokes when one will do, and every motion is calculated, clean, precise. She does not meddle with the forms of suffering or vengeance or wanton violence; they are beneath her. She is careful with her palette; blood blooms red and blue and green from foreheads, almost gentle, almost tender. She is not wild; she is not vulgar. Her works are almost delicate, and yet they are absolute. The cold planets are where he notices it the most, as bodies crumple to the snow, leaving streaks of brightness against pristine white. 

She does not linger over these works; it is not in her to admire what she has done; she is not her own audience. They called him Archangel on Omega, so he read their myths to catch the meaning. Shepard is angel of mercy and angel of death wrapped up together, swift and sudden, unfailing and unforgiving, giving form to the word in a way he never could. 

He is admirer and witness and captive, all at the same time.

It does not matter how many times Garrus sees her in action, for one moment, just before the conflict begins, in the heartbeat before he lifts his own weapon and joins the inevitable fray, he is arrested by her intensity, her stillness, a sculpture as elegant as the art she is about to create. More. He knows she is breathing in everything around her. The terrain, the number of hostiles, the kiss of wind on her cheek, the scent of smoke in the air. She is already planning her work of art, and she will use them all. He already yearns to see what she will create. A shiver of anticipation runs the length of his spine. His breath catches. Every time.

Here, in battle, no one would dare to claim she cannot dance. He is her partner, surely, the constant presence at her back or at her side. He is another of her tools, willingly used, an extension of her art. He goes where she points, his arm hers, and while they move, while they weave between enemies leaving death-still sculptures and splashes of rainbow color in their wake, so in sync even the pace of their breath aligns, the line between life and death has never seemed so fine, and he has never been so willing to walk it.

In the end, she wipes sweat and blood—not hers, not his—from her brow and she smiles.  _Into hell_ , he thinks.  _Into hell I would follow you, for another of these battles, for another of those smiles._  

Her smile says she knows. His is a vow.


	23. Make It An Hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, set mid-ME3, roughly between One Step at a Time and A Number of Quiet Attentions. Garrus POV.

After a particularly long day spent dealing with a host of particularly frustrating issues, Garrus was glad when Shepard pinged him over the comms and invited him upstairs. He found her sitting cross-legged on the couch, a broken-down gun mid-cleaning on one side, a stack of datapads on the other. She was looking between them like she didn’t know what to tackle first.

Wordlessly, he gathered the various gun parts and set them aside. It wasn’t her Black Widow, after all. Even if they were called out immediately she could run a mission with a Predator as backup instead of the Carnifex; she rarely resorted to her pistol anyway. She put the flat of her hand down on the datapads when he tried to collect them, too.

“Sure you don’t want some help at least?” he asked.

She lifted the top two datapads and held them aloft, one in each hand. “Would you like a cranky salarian dalatrass?” she asked, gesturing with the left. “Or a more obliquely cranky asari matriarch?”

“At least we’re branching out from cranky primarchs and krogan clan leaders?”

Her face scrunched into a scowl half-amused and half-genuinely-annoyed. “They’re just further down in the pile, I think. It’s like herding cats.”

He chuckled, taking both the dalatrass and the asari matriarch. “I don’t know that one. And it still sounds miserable.”

She sighed, leaning back and tilting her head to rest on the curve of the couch cushion. Reaching over, he pushed a lock of fallen hair from her brow. She turned her head, pressing her cheek to his palm, and smiled at him.

“Or,” he said, “we could take a break. What do you say? Fifteen minutes? No business?”

The corners of her eyes crinkled as the smile broadened into a leering grin. “Only fifteen minutes? Hardly sounds worth my while. Takes you that long to get out of that monstrous getup of yours. Make it an hour and we’ll talk.”

He bent his forehead to hers, and then scooped up the pile of datapads, placing them in a neat stack on the table. This time she didn’t argue with him. When he turned back to her, the leer was gone and she had a strange, thoughtful look on her face. He settled beside her again, and she immediately reached for his hand, wrapping her fingers tight around his.

“This is what we’re going to do, Garrus. Sometime, when we have five minutes of shore leave, we’re going to go out and pretend we’re on a normal first date. You know. Drinks. Chatting. Flirting. Like normal people. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“What? No dancing?”

She glared at him, eyes narrowing dangerously.

Garrus smirked. “Besides, I think I preferred our real first date.”

“Bantering over the comms while shooting things? That’s not a date. I want you to wear something other than armor. And I want you to talk to me in the sexy voice.”

“The… what?” He blinked at her. She lifted her eyebrows and gave them an exaggerated, suggestive waggle. She looked ridiculous. He wanted to kiss her. “Shepard. Please.”

Her cheeks flushed, but not, if the look in her eyes was anything to go by, with embarrassment. “Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. The ‘if I wanted to do more than take your shields down, I’d have done it’ voice.”

“Complete and utter exhaustion turns you on? Kinky.”

She poked him hard, unerringly finding a weak spot in his armor. He winced even as his mandibles flicked into a smile. “Now you’re just being difficult.”

Catching her wrist, he wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her close. She obliged by draping her legs over his and leaning in. He bent his head and nuzzled her neck until she shivered in his arms. “Fine,” he said, low and intent, “in the unlikely event we ever have that five minutes of shore leave, I’ll meet you at a bar and pretend I don’t already know exactly how to make you shudder.”

“Mmm,” she murmured, tilting her head and running nimble fingers along the side of his own neck before dropping them to the seals of his armor. “Yeah, that’s the voice.”


	24. Enamor Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, ME3, after the events of A Number of Quiet Attentions, Shepard POV  
> (Verb meme: Enamor Me, characters trying to woo one another)

Shepard almost turned around when the first thing she heard as the battery door opened was the annoyed muttering of the resident turian. Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself onward. Garrus was standing at the workbench, moving things around with entirely more force than necessary. Stomach twisting, she cleared her throat.

“You okay?” she asked. “Uh. Need to talk?”

He visibly gathered whatever was bothering him, wrapped it up, and shoved it away, like a kid hiding all their dirty clothes and broken toys under the bed. By the time he turned to face her, he was calm again, leaning so casually against the workbench she almost started to doubt she’d heard the muttering and banging at all.

“Nice try,” she said.

“You’ve got—”

“Plenty of time.”

Garrus sighed, a little of the swagger draining away. He rolled his neck. “I know it’s not my place, but I thought I asked nicely.”

Shepard cocked her head, raising an eyebrow. “Asked who what?”

“Your Alliance crew. To leave things alone in here. Every time one of them starts messing around, it’s—”

“Calibrations unto eternity, I know.”

He snorted, which was almost a laugh, so she considered it a win and moved closer, leaning next to him against the bench. “It doesn’t make sense. They didn’t touch the Thanix this time, they just completely destroyed my carefully—”

“Calibrated?” she interrupted.

“ _Organized_ ,” he insisted, with an exasperated glower, “workbench.”

“Oh,” Shepard said, as understanding hit her with the force of a biotic shockwave. From behind.

Garrus narrowed his eyes, mandibles flaring. “That was ominous.”

“Ah.”

“Shepard? Do  _you_ need to talk?”

“It was, um. Yeah. It was me, actually.” She lifted her shoulders in a shrug as awkward as it was uncomfortable. “It’s just… you were doing all those nice things for me so I thought… you know, I thought I’d return the favor.”

“So you… rearranged my tools?”

She winced. “Your workbench was an abomination.”

“Says the woman who’s had dirty wineglasses on the table in her cabin for months?”

“Well, what do you get for the turian who has everything?” She sighed, shoulders slumping as she opened her hands in helpless apology. “I didn’t mean to make things  _worse_.”

“Shepard,” he said softly, cupping the side of her face with one hand. His thumb brushed along the curve of her cheekbone and she shivered, leaning into the touch. “I feel about my tools the way you feel about your fish.”

He touched his brow to hers as he said it though, and his subharmonics thrummed with barely-restrained mirth. Her own lips pulled into a grin in response. “ _Oh_.” She turned her cheek and pressed a kiss into his warm palm. “Then how about I let you push all the buttons on the next ground mission? That’s an  _excellent_ present, right?”

He laughed, and his free arm swept around her waist to pull her close. “Just how much time  _do_ you have right now?”

“Like I said,” she murmured, already reaching for the seals of his armor, “ _plenty_.”


	25. Gymnophoria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tali POV, ME3  
> Word meme ficlet: Gymnophoria: The sensation that someone is mentally undressing you.

The bosh’tet at the shop’s kiosk thinks he’s being subtle.

He isn’t, of course. He’s just one of the ones too stupid to realize that just because he can’t see her face doesn’t mean she’s not perfectly capable of reading every nuance on his.

He’s human. In some ways, humans are the worst. They blunder around, hardly ever aware how many signals they’re sending. Now that she’s had plenty of experience cataloguing their various facial expressions and learning the language their bodies speak without words, Tali is particularly adept at reading those signals. Not, of course, that Shepard has ever looked at her the way this human looks now. Shepard doesn’t  _leer_  (except, sometimes, at Garrus, and then only in fun). Shepard doesn’t lean against counters and puff out her chest and cock her eyebrow. Keelah, Shepard would offer her fist to anyone who looked at  _her_  the way this human is looking at Tali now, like she’s something to be devoured. Tali is tempted, but picking a fight in the middle of the Presidium’s market district doesn’t seem like the right way to make a good impression, and she’s expecting the turian diplomat at any moment.

Behind the relative safety of her face-plate, she sighs. The human has turned now, still across the plaza but facing her, not content to leave her in peace. The way his lips are pursed is, she thinks, some kind of perverse invitation. His eyes track down her figure and back up again; she resists the urge to cross her arms protectively over her chest. He’s wondering what they all wonder, of course, the color of her skin, the taste of her lips, what it would feel like to peel the suit from her narrow shoulders and down over her full hips. 

She wonders those things too, sometimes. But never while picturing someone like him. And she’s pretty sure this bosh’tet doesn’t know the first thing about filters or controlled environments or antibiotics. 

He tilts his head. He’s definitely wondering about her hips. He licks his lips. Maybe not just her hips then. Ugh. Maybe a punch wouldn’t even be lesson enough.

“Hey, quarian,” he calls out, loud enough that she can’t pretend she didn’t hear. He’s not even bothering to hide his arrogance or the expectation she’ll drop everything and listen to him. “You all know… tech, right? Can I get your opinion on these… heh,  _capacitors_?”

More than one of the Presidium’s denizens turns to look at her now. Some look confused, others annoyed at the intrusion. One or two faces twists in open dislike and distrust, but that’s nothing new. No one looks particularly sympathetic.

_What would Shepard do?_

She sighs again. Shepard wouldn’t have to do anything. Everyone on the Citadel knows Shepard’s face these days, and only a bosh’tet of epic proportions would risk offending _Commander Shepard, Spectre, Savior of the Citadel, Last Hope Against the Reapers_. Quarian admirals aren’t quite so visible, and Tali is very good at dodging Diana Allers and her persistent requests for ‘the quarian perspective.’

 _What would Shepard do if she had to do_ something _?_

When she realizes exactly what Shepard would do, Tali laughs softly and saunters toward the kiosk. He wants hips? She’ll show him  _hips_. By the time she reaches him, he’s gone pink, and if she’s not mistaken the beads of sweat on his brow have nothing to do with artificial sunlight.

“The N26-34 is a better model than the N26-35,” she purrs, exaggerating the false seductiveness, making it an attack. She imagines Shepard chuckling appreciatively. “If you can find them. And don’t bother with the N27 series at all. They’re all… show. No… power.”

“Uh,” he says. “Yeah. Uh. Thanks.”

She cocks one hip and settles a hand on it, highlighting the curve of waist to hip he couldn’t stop staring at just minutes ago. Now he shifts uncomfortably. “Can I help you with… anything else?”  _Bosh’tet?_

He blinks and averts his eyes, shaking his head like a chastised child.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, all crisp professionalism once again. “Maybe next time you keep your eyes to yourself. These are dangerous times, after all. You never know when the subject of your ogling might have a shotgun she’s not afraid to use.”

He mumbles something unintelligible and dashes off. Behind him, the shopkeeper calls out, “Hey, didn’t you want this?” but he doesn’t look back. Grinning the triumph no one else around her can see, Tali smooths the fabric over her hips and turns to greet the turian diplomat just now coming around the corner.


	26. On Kissing Turians (Pt. 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set ME3, Garrus POV

Human beds weren’t precisely  _comfortable_ , by turian standards, but with Shepard pressed up against him, enfolded by his left arm, he could hardly complain and he certainly didn’t want to be anywhere else. Her hair, longer now than it had been when he’d first looked down his scope on Omega and thought he was hallucinating, half-covered her face, hiding her expression from him. With his free hand he reached down and brushed the strands back, tucking the loose locks behind her delicate ear. She tilted her head just enough to give him a view of her sleepy, satisfied smile before she captured his hand and pressed a kiss into his palm.

He meant to tell her how beautiful she was, or how happy he was, or something similarly romantic, but instead the words that fell out of his open mouth were, “When  _did_  you and Williams talk about kissing turians, anyway?”

Her brow furrowed, confused, and she blinked away a little of the sleepiness. “Huh?”

He was too close and they were too entwined to make ducking his head a feasible option, but he couldn’t stop his mandibles from flicking in embarrassment. “Something she said once. Uh, about rethinking kissing turians? I was wondering when you talked about kissing them. In the first place.”

Something about what he said made a light go off behind her eyes, and her sudden smile erased the creases his earlier question had caused. “You were wondering for  _two and a half years_?”

Here he did duck his head a little, though he wasn’t able to hide from her sparkling amusement. “Well, not… constantly.”

The only warning he had was the faint twitch of her nose before she began to laugh. A real laugh, full and hearty and all the more precious for being so damned rare. Flinging an arm tight around his waist, she pressed her cheek to his chest and  _laughed_. Twice she almost collected herself, only to burst into giggles all over again, body soft and trembling with the tremors of her mirth against him in a way that, truthfully, was rather turning his attention away from rehashing an old conversation with Williams and toward how he might get her to start thinking about kissing a very particular turian sooner rather than later.

“She was uneasy about all the aliens on the crew,” Shepard finally explained, voice still a little high and breathless with laughter. “Not her fault really; she had no experience. When I told her she was going to have to accept it, she said something like, oh, what was it? ‘You say jump, I say how high. You tell me to kiss a turian, I’ll ask which cheek.’” Shepard chuckled again, rising to kiss his mandible, which had the secondary effect of pressing the entire length of her body against him. Drawing back just enough to let him see her smirk, she added, “I told her kissing turians wasn’t going to be necessary. She said, ‘You never know, Commander.’” Shepard’s sigh took on a shade of melancholy. “I suppose I’d have words to eat, if she could see us now.” She shook her head, the telltale little quiver he knew was her way of banishing things she didn’t want to think about. It was too regular an occurrence these days. Garrus only reached up and ran his fingers through her hair. She leaned into the touch, and he felt the brief sadness ebb.

“Left,” he said, low and gravelly, in the voice she professed to love best.

Her lips twitched, but this time it wasn’t only amusement in her eyes, and, more importantly, the melancholy had vanished. “You giving me orders now, Vakarian?”

“Merely making a suggestion. Ma’am.”

“Mmm,” she murmured, dragging her thigh against his, smiling the private smile of promise he definitely  _did_  love best, her lips a breath away from him. “Sounds like an entirely necessary operation to me.”

“I am known for my tactical expertise.”

“Prove it,” she said, cocking an eyebrow in sultry challenge.

“Aye, aye,” he replied, bringing his mouth to meet hers.

Some orders even a not-very-good turian was  _always_  happy to follow.

 


	27. Unbind Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, Shepard POV, ME3  
> (Verb meme: Unbind Me, one character freeing another. Or not.)

“This isn’t funny.”

“On the contrary.”

“Garrus.”

“Shepard?”

“Garrus!”

“Need me for something?”

“ _Garrus Vakarian!_ ”

He crossed his arms and fixed her with a stern glare. “I did warn you. You just didn’t  _listen_.”

She tried to return his sternness with an equal dose of her own, but it was terribly difficult to glower when one was swinging gently by the ankle from a snare evidently set to capture something the size and weight of an  _elcor_ , if the force of the spring and strength of the rope was any indication. “I warn you that if you don’t get me out of this before Tali gets back, you’re not getting laid for the foreseeable future.”

Garrus laughed, cocking a hip and raising his brow plates skeptically. “Now there’s an empty threat if I ever heard one.” He lifted his omni-tool. “What about vid? Allers could run it as a human interest story. You’re human. This is… well, it’s certainly interesting.”

“Garrus!” she wailed, trying to swing closer to him and succeeding only in sending herself in sick-making circles. “Get me down! Why couldn’t they have set  _land mines_  or something?”

“Only you would wish for land mines, Shepard.”

On her next rotation, he took mercy on her and grabbed her by the hands. She immediately closed her fingers tight around his wrists. “It’s still spinning. Everything’s spinning. I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Some people might consider this a just punishment for all those insane rides in the Mako.”

She groaned. “Please?”

“Fine, fine. If you promise not to throw up on me, I’ll get you down.”

She narrowed her eyes mutinously, suspecting the expression didn’t quite have the same effect from upside down. Garrus bent at the waist and nuzzled her cheek. She nipped the end of his mandible to prove she was serious, but he only chuckled again, and kissed her. It took some maneuvering to make sure he could cut the rope with an omni-blade and catch her at the same time. That would be just her luck: survive Reapers on foot, Collectors possessed by Harbinger,  _Banshees_  only to brain herself falling out of some crazed poacher’s trap.

Even with Garrus braced for the impact, they both went down under her weight and the force of the fall.

“Oof. You’re heavy.”

“Oof,” she replied, rolling off him with more force than necessary, making sure to jab him with an elbow or two for good measure, “you’re in so much trouble when I think up some appropriate revenge.”

“Hey! I didn’t set the trap.”

She arched a brow and extended her hand, hoisting him back up to his feet, and following through by lifting herself onto her toes to kiss the mandible she’d bitten earlier. He hummed appreciatively. “Took your sweet time getting me down, though, didn’t you?” She smiled, slow and secret. Garrus blinked at her and shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t know, Vakarian. Maybe later we see how you like it when the tables are turned.”

The sound that emerged from him was half-choke, half-groan and  _entirely_ satisfying.


	28. Date Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard POV, ME3

"You know, Vakarian, I have the highest regard for the thoroughness of your research, but I think I've stumbled on a hole in it."

His chuckle crackled over the comms, low and pleasing, making her stomach flip in a way that had nothing whatsoever to do with the ebbing adrenaline of battle. From the relative privacy provided by her tactical cloak, she watched him stride across the battlefield to retrieve a pair of dropped heat sinks and let herself enjoy the view. "Don't tell me I missed another human holiday. Real or imaginary."

She snorted. "It's not my fault you believed Donnelly's assertion about the universal importance of Haggis Day."

"I knew about the one with the hearts. Somehow stomachs didn't seem that far-fetched."

"We don't  _eat_ hearts on Valentine's Day, Garrus." She paused. "Unless they're made of chocolate. Which, fair enough, is strange when it comes right down to it."

He lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug, and even armored and helmeted, his bafflement rang clear. She was pretty sure his expression, were it visible, would be the one with the twitching nose and the agitated mandibles that meant he was confused, and that always made her want to take his face between her hands and kiss him. Repeatedly. "I've never been much for the hearts, anyway. No loss. No, no. It's something else. You see, humans do this thing. It's called dating."

Aggrieved, he said, "I know what _dating_ is, Shepard."

As her cloak shimmered and faded out, she cocked a hip and bent slowly to pick up a replacement heat sink of her own and continued conversationally, "Usually it involves getting a drink. Maybe some food. Watching a vid. I don't know. Elcor Shakespeare seems to be all the rage." She straightened vertebra by vertebra, making sure to accentuate the curve of her waist as she did, gratified that he stared the entire time. Which made her want to kiss him even more, frankly.

His hesitation before speaking was proof enough of his distraction. And interest. Even with the distortion, she could hear the thrum of desire in his subvocals. "You're saying taking out Cerberus troops and bumping shoulders on the Kodiak isn't a date, then?"

"Too much armor. Not enough candlelight. Or cuddling." She grinned. "Good banter, though."

Vega, standing off to the side, gazed upward as if staring could make Cortez and the Kodiak appear faster, and cleared his throat. Loudly enough to produce a feedback whine in Shepard's ear. She winced. "You guys know I can hear all this, right?" he said. "Surround sound."

"You telling us to get a room, Lieutenant?"

"Wouldn't dream of it, ma'am." A heavy pause followed. "But yeah. Please."

She felt the ghost of a touch at her lower back, and turned her head. Garrus bent down, brushing the side of his helmet against hers. "Still time to turn this date around?" he asked softly, pitching his voice low in the way that basically drove all thoughts of anything _but_ kissing straight out of her head. Vega groaned, linking his hands behind his back and staring resolutely skyward. the Kodiak was a bright spot, accelerating quickly. 

"I don't know, Vakarian," she replied, lifting her chin so he could catch sight of her grin through the faceplate of her helmet. "You, me, and a mission report. How does it sound?"

"Honestly?" He chuckled. "Still better than elcor Shakespeare."

"Then, with genuine enthusiasm: I can't wait."


	29. Malapert

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, Shepard/Garrus  
> Malapert: clever in manners of speech. (Adj: boldly disrespectful to a person of higher standing; noun: an impudent person.)

When the woman sauntered into his office and hitched one hip up on the side of his desk rather than sitting herself in the chair opposite him, Garrus realized it was going to be one of _those days_  and she was going to be one of  _those cases._

“Ma’am, the chair,” he said, keeping his voice even. It took some effort. The woman was wearing a short, slim-fitting dress, high-necked, but with panels cut out of the sides, highlighting an extremely trim waist. For a human. He didn’t know exactly what she was in for, but the dress was definitely a crime, given the things it was doing to him. Just not a crime he could prosecute, if he wanted to maintain any level of respect amongst his superiors. 

She kicked her foot lazily. Every motion hitched the skirt a little higher. Her legs were long and slender, but muscular. Her knowing grin said she’d caught him staring, and she wiggled her hips, inching the fabric higher still. “I’m nobody’s ma’am,  _sir_.”

If he’d ever heard a less genuine sir in his life, he didn’t know when. Unwilling to rise to her bait, he folded his hands on the desk and leaned forward, the picture of stern disapproval. 

“Where’s your arresting officer? Your handler?”

She lifted a shoulder. “Why? Can’t handle little old me all by your lonesome?” She leered. “Or are you just that kinky?”

“The chair, ma’am,” he repeated. When she remained where she was, he added, “We can do this the hard way, or the easy way. Your choice.”

She waggled her damnably emotive human eyebrows. “Oh, I’m going to have to go with the _hard_  way. Sir.”

“Chair.”

She leaned forward, close enough for him to smell the aroma of her hair and skin; close enough to see the fluttering pulse beneath the smooth skin of her neck; close enough he’d barely have to move to taste that skin with the flat of his tongue—

“I’m sorry,  _Officer_  Vakarian—or is it Detective?—am I  _distracting_  you?” She reached out and deliberately brushed his pile of carefully compiled reports off his desk. Paper and datapads went every which way, hours and hours of work now lying in a jumbled heap on the floor. His mandibles flicked in irritation. Her red-painted lips smirked. “Oops.”

“You’re going to regret that,” he said.

“Am I?” She arched a brow and giggled. “You going to punish me for  _that_  the hard way, too?” Her gaze drifted boldly from crest to cowl to waist, lingering with undisguised intent as it dropped. She rose from her perch on the desk, but instead of planting herself in the chair as he’d commanded, she moved instead nearer, standing beside him and leaning back on her hands, close enough for him to see the sinuous shift of the bared skin at her waist.

He made an involuntary noise deep in his throat. “That  _dress_ ,” he muttered. “Where the hell did you—”

She clapped a hand over his mouth to silence him. His mandibles flared. A moment later, he had her turned around, stomach pressed to the edge of his desk and arms firmly behind her back. He was close enough to feel her shiver at the sound of his cuffs closing around her slim wrists. “This,” he growled in her ear, low and menacing, “is the hard way.”

“I know you C-Sec types. All talk. No action.” She arched her lower back, which simultaneously made her waist look even smaller and pushed her rear closer to him. “Tell me,  _sir_ , just how many regulations would it break if someone were to walk in and catch us fucking on your desk?”

He wasn’t wearing armor, so only a couple of thin layers of fabric separated them when he pushed back against her. “Depends,” he said, “on whether we leave the cuffs on.” 

She groaned, but was smirking again when she glanced over her shoulder. “As it happens, I’ve never met a regulation I didn’t want to break.”

He ran his hands down the bare skin of her arms, tracing light patterns with his fingertips that made the fine hair stand on end and the skin pebble beneath. Her bound hands twitched, as though longing to echo his actions. Finally, he settled his palms against her uncovered waist and said softly, “You sure, Shepard? I don’t want you to be—”

“First rule of infiltration,” she interrupted, with a mock-glower, “is don’t break character.”

He turned her to face him, cushioning her lower back with his hand so it wouldn’t dig into the edge of the desk. Dropping his mouth to her ear, he murmured, “First rule of Garrus Vakarian is I am all for games and all for teasing, but I won’t pretend to make love to someone other than you.”

He felt her breath catch, and then her soft lips found the underside of his jaw, right in the spot guaranteed to make him shudder. “I think that’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she murmured. Then she slid one leg up his thigh, hooked it over his hip and tugged with enough strength to make those thin layers of fabric all but inconsequential. “I still want to do it on the desk, though.” She nibbled his neck enticingly and then soothed the little bites with a flurry of kisses. “And I really do want to break the regulation involving these cuffs.”

“Yes,  _ma’am_ ,” he replied, and she rewarded him with the brightest, most infectious of her laughs.


	30. Forgive Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, ME3, post-Omega DLC, Shepard POV  
> (Verb meme: Forgive Me, one character forgiving another)

“You’re upset with me. I get that.”

Garrus didn’t look up from his console as Shepard spoke, but the clipped precision of his fingers on the interface told her all she needed to know. Added to the way he had carefully not looked at her once since she entered the main battery, it was probably the frostiest reception he’d ever given her. Including their first chat after she stood between his bullet and Sidonis’ head, and that attempt at conversation had rewritten her previous definition of chilly.

“Look, Garrus—”

“It was your call to make, Commander.”

The final word whipped out and stung her like an unexpected slap. Her lips parted and startled heat rose in her cheeks. Words—all the wrong ones—tumbled around in her head, but none of them made it as far as her tongue. Garrus laid his hands flat on the console but still didn’t turn to face her. She saw him take a deep breath. “Is that all? I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“Aria didn’t want anyone else involved. You, mostly, I think.” She tried for a placating smile. Probably good he wasn’t looking at her to see it; it felt sickly even to her. She let it die. “Bad blood. Can’t blame her.”

Garrus turned his head slightly, and she almost wished he hadn’t. His eyes narrowed, piercing in their disappointed, disapproving intensity. “I can, actually. Blame her. She’s been around long enough to know exactly what she was doing. She used Commander Shepard to ensure her legitimacy on the galactic stage. What did you get in return?”

She held her hands wide. “She had resources; I had time. I’m not saying I couldn’t have handled it better, but—”

He turned completely then, crossing his arms over his chest, his mandibles pulled tight to his cheeks, the motion stopping her mid-sentence. “After everything that went down in the Bahak, I was under the obviously mistaken impression that you wouldn’t vanish again. Without telling anyone. Without anyone trustworthy on your six. Not that I’m questioning you. Who would dare?” His mandibles flicked their irritation, but his voice remained steady, giving her little. “You’re Commander Shepard.”

“That’s not fair. It was a risk, but the benefits—”

“The benefits?” Garrus scoffed. “ _What_  benefits? Don’t get me wrong. We’re soldiers. This is a war. Our lives are on the line every day, and that’s not changing any time soon. But Aria? Omega? Help from mercenaries who’re just as likely to turn around and stab you in the back for the right price—and always less than you’d think—are worth  _nothing_  to me. They’re worth virtually nothing to the war effort. They’re sure as hell not worth  _your_  life. Not even close.” He shook his head. “All of which you knew I’d say. Not because I—not as your boyfriend. It was a bad order you knew I’d question.” For a moment, she thought he was going to come closer, but he only dropped his arms and closed his hands into loose, helpless fists at his sides. “You insist we’re equal partners in this thing and you insist we shouldn’t lie to one another, but partners don’t have different sets of rules governing them and a lie of omission is still a damned lie.”

“I—” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and straightened her shoulders like a recruit accepting a deserved dressing-down. “You know what? You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

He blinked at her. She blinked back, biting down on her bottom lip. Silence stretched between them for five seconds, ten. Then his mandibles flared into a faint grin. “Could I get you to repeat that?” he said. “I wasn’t recording and I think I want to keep those words for posterity.”

“I will,” she replied, taking a step toward him and relieved beyond measure when he met her halfway. “If you promise never to call me  _Commander_ again in that horrible tone.”


	31. Fight Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, ME3, Shepard POV  
> (Verb meme: Fight Me, one character fighting with another)

Shepard had a long fuse. It burned quietly; he was pretty sure most people didn’t notice the way she grew more and more focused and silent the angrier she got, but he’d seen it before. He just wasn’t sure it had ever been directed  _at him_. And he wasn’t even sure what he’d  _done._

It was damned terrifying.

Except for orders snapped over the comms, she was silent until the end of the mission. She said nothing on the Kodiak—not to him, not to Tali, not to Cortez—merely sitting in the seat farthest away from him, furiously filling out a mission report. He lingered once they were aboard the _Normandy_ , expecting her to pull him aside—to give him some clue—but she only stripped herself of her gear, cleaning it with her usual ruthless precision before heading briskly for the elevator.

“Shepard,” he called after her. She ignored him, bringing the side of her closed fist to the call button. He dropped his rifle on the workbench with a silent promise to return later and take care of it properly, and jogged to the elevator, slipping inside just as the doors slid shut. “What the hell?”

Her lips thinned. Her jaw clenched. She said nothing. The door opened on the Crew Deck. He didn’t get out even though it was clear she wanted him to, and when she turned her head he saw the last of that burned-out fuse igniting with a flash. Private Westmoreland, standing outside, put one foot inside the elevator, took a look at them, and beat a hasty retreat, stammering some excuse they neither of them paid any attention to. Shepard didn’t try to stop her.

He followed her when she stalked toward her cabin, his own ire rising in proportion to her silence. Before she reached the door, in one fluid move she dropped, kicked a leg out, hooked her foot between calf and spur and tugged. Because it was the very last thing he was expecting, he barely managed to put a hand out in time to catch himself, springing back into a crouch. She’d used her own momentum to swing around into a similar stance.

“What,” he snapped, “is this  _about_?”

“Don’t you dare,” she retorted, cheeks even pinker in a way that had little to do with exertion and everything to do with anger. “I should ground you after the shit you pulled down there. Indefinitely.”

He opened his mouth to protest and then shook his head, baffled, uncertain how to proceed. He ran through the events of the mission forward and backward and didn’t hit on anything that should’ve pissed her off like this. “What the hell am I missing, Shepard?”

She glared at him—all of a sudden the  _if looks could kill_  idiom made a lot more sense—and straightened, slamming her hand against the door’s opening mechanism with so much force he almost expected to see sparks. “Do you think you’re  _expendable_?”

“Do I— _what_?”

She whirled on him, and he rose to his feet, guard up in case of further sudden attacks. This time she only pointed a finger at him and said, “You were supposed to stay on my six.”

“I—oh.”

“Came back to you, did it?”

“I wasn’t in any danger,” he insisted. “You were.” He reached up, tapping the side of his visor. “Your shields were at five percent and your cloak was still six seconds from a recharge. My shields were almost full; there was no way that shot could’ve taken me out.” His mandibles flicked his annoyance. “If anything, I’m the one who should be pissed off. If I’m not expendable, same goes double for you. You are going to have to ground me if you think I won’t take a ten percent risk to prevent something ninety percent likely to harm you.”

“My command, my call. If you have a problem with that—”

“Do you have a damned death wish I don’t know about?” He gestured broadly before closing his hand into a fist at his side. “Cheating death once didn’t make you invincible, Shepard. All those cybernetics won’t put the fragments of your skull back together if some Cerberus lackey blows your brain out while you’re dashing headlong into danger.”

“Are you questioning my tactics, Vakarian?”

“I am questioning why, when you have the most powerful sniper rifle in the galaxy and  _portable cover_ , you’ve suddenly decided pistol shots at point-blank range are the best option available to you, yeah.”

He didn’t know what he was expecting, but given how furious she’d been, the sudden slump of her shoulders wasn’t it. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and then scrubbed her hands back over her bound-up hair. “Maybe what I really need to do is ground myself,” she said softly, almost to herself. When she lifted her gaze, he saw all the rage had boiled away, leaving her sad and worn and frayed around the edges. It was an expression she wore all too often these days. It made his gut twist. “I—you’re right, of course. You were doing your job. I shouldn’t have thrown that all on you.”

“Or tripped me,” he replied dryly. She almost smiled, so he took a step closer and tilted his head, opening a hand like the most tentative of offers. “I can take it, you know. Uh, the venting. I could do without the sudden physical attacks.”

In return, she gestured him into her cabin. As he stepped up beside her, she touched the back of his hand with gentle fingertips. “I don’t, actually. Have a death wish.” Her lips twisted like she was swallowing something sharp and bitter. “I have a… life wish, I think, and this war—everything—the petty arguments, the unnecessary conflict, the finger-pointing and name-calling—just makes it all so damned hard. I guess I just wanted to look a real enemy in the face and end pull a trigger. Something real. Something I could control.” She shook her head slightly. “I, uh… I’ll retire the pistol for a while. Except as backup.” She lifted her chin, and though her smile was faded and faint, at least it was a smile. “Thanks for watching my back. And my unprotected side. And my thankfully-unexploded skull. And… everything. Else.”

“You got it,” he said, covering her hand with his own.  _Always._ He cleared his throat, smiling a smile of his own, mostly to cover the lingering worry. “But, fair warning, I’m definitely going to retaliate for that unprovoked attack out in the hall.”

She snorted, almost herself again. Almost. Not quite. “You can try.”


	32. Ordering In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, after Citadel, which, in this continuity happens after Life Signs, Shepard POV

“What does this one do?”

Momentarily turning away from the stove, Shepard glanced over her shoulder. “It’s a potato masher. You know. For mashing potatoes.”

Garrus turned it over in his hands, his expression so puzzled Shepard had to bite her bottom lip—hard—to keep from laughing. He set the offending utensil on the counter and rifled around in the drawer until he came up with something new, all angles and hinges. “This one?”

Shepard shrugged. “Fancy wine opener? For fancy wine?”

He dangled the instrument in front of him, making it sway back and forth on one of its hinges. “Remind me never to buy any wine that fancy, no matter what my salary is. If it takes longer to get into the thing than it does to drink it, it’s not worth the trouble.”

The maybe-a-bottle-opener joined the potato masher and the garlic press and the citrus zester and all the other utensils Garrus had spent the last half-hour quizzing her about. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said as he once more pulled an item from the drawer. “This is a weapon.”

“It’s a rolling pin,” Shepard explained. “Knives are weapons. That thing’s for, I don’t know, making cookies or something.”

Garrus smirked, letting one end of the rolling pin drop into his hand with all the menace of a policeman’s nightstick. “Death cookies, maybe. It’s made of stone. Seriously, Shepard. You could brain a guy with this thing.”

Snorting, she waved in the vague direction of the front door. “You mean if some intruder makes it past your glass wall booby trap? Or the exploding coffee maker?”

Garrus lifted a shoulder in a sheepish shrug. “We rigged one of the paintings, too, I think. I, uh, just don’t remember which one. And one of the showers may or may not begin spraying acid without warning. I’m not sure that was intentional. Massani’s… complicated.”

The seriousness of her glare was ruined somewhat by the accompanying laughter. Then she crouched in front of the stove and pushed another of the unresponsive buttons. Something inside clicked, but the heat remained stubbornly off. She pressed the button again. Another click. Followed by nothing.

“Problem, Shepard?” Garrus asked with the kind of sly edge that said he knew damned well what was happening. She ignored him, opening the oven and peering into its unknowable depths. It remained persistently icy. She considered kicking it, but the last thing she needed Garrus teasing her about was the inevitable limp.

“Hero of Elysium,” Garrus intoned. “Savior of the Citadel. Slayer of Reapers. Defeated at last. By an appliance.”

“Oh, shut up.”

He didn’t. “No terminal too secure, no tech too obscure for Commander Shepard to crack. Who never met a wall-safe she couldn’t—and wouldn’t—loot or a button she wouldn’t push; the one person in the galaxy who got a Prothean beacon to give up its secrets, but, alas, even her most valiant attempts at cooking dinner were thwarted by a—”

“I’m going to cook you for dinner, smart-ass.”

Garrus laughed, and she felt him sidle up behind her, crouching down to peer over her shoulder.

“Not in a cold oven, you’re not.”

She jabbed a swift elbow into his gut, but he only retaliated by wrapping his arms around her, nuzzling the side of her head—probably completely messing up her hair in the process—and musing, “You know there are a dozen restaurants just a stroll away. Maybe not as good as the sushi place—”

Shepard tipped her head back and glowered at him. “How original. A Shepard-destroys-the-sushi-place joke.”

With him so close, his answering chuckle thrummed against her back, causing heat of an entirely different, not-in-any-way-oven-related sort to pool in her belly. 

“Your secret’s safe with me,” he teased. “Wouldn’t want the Reapers to find out all they need to do to win the war is—” Before he could finish, she used his awkward position and unbalanced center of gravity against him, pushing back just hard enough to send him sprawling. Before he could retaliate, she rolled herself on top of him, pinning him to the ground with her weight and the pressure of her knees against his sensitive waist.

He suddenly looked very, very hungry indeed, and it was her turn to smirk.

She ran her hands down his sides until she reached the hem of his shirt. He squirmed, but she held her hands away from him, close but not close enough. “Fine,” she said, giving her hips a subtle roll. Garrus closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “Let’s go out for dinner.”

“Now?” he managed to choke out, and she was gratified to have stolen almost all the cockiness from his tone. “Seriously, Shepard?”

She batted her eyelashes at him in feigned innocence, leaning back. And wriggling. Not at all suggestively. He groaned. “Sure,” she said, “all that oven warfare’s left me famished. If only some charitable soul had helped instead of teasing me…”

“I will fix your stove or die in the attempt,” Garrus promised. “Later.”

“In that case,” she said, draping herself across him and pressing her lips to his nose and left mandible and mouth, “how about an appetizer?”

“That’s more like it,” he said, reaching up to run a hand through her hair and then cradling the back of her head as he returned her kiss. “And a case might be made for ordering in.”

The rolling pin took that moment to do what it did best, rolling off the counter and onto the floor, missing their heads by scant inches.

“Told you,” he said, giving a startled blink. “Weapon.”

She laughed, running her fingertips along the side of his face and neck until he sighed with pleasure. “Beware the wrath of the potato masher, Garrus. Desperate to continue never being used, the utensils may be staging a coup.”

He chuckled, sitting up and pulling her along with him. “Bedroom?”

“Hopefully,” she said, clambering to her feet and dragging him up with her, “not the one with the exploding painting.”


	33. Tell Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, ME3, Shepard POV  
> (Verb meme, Tell Me, one character confession something to another)

Shepard lay in darkness lit blue by the light of her fish tank, and stared up at the stars. Five seconds. And then fifteen. She made it to thirty before she shuddered and looked away. Her record was a minute and three seconds, but she’d felt unsettled and cold all the next day and did not repeat it. The solid shape beside her was everything the stars were not: familiar, and warm, and soothing. She smiled fondly though he was facing away from her, and even were he awake he couldn’t have seen it.

“Garrus?” she whispered.

He shifted slightly beneath the blankets. “Mmm?”

“Are you sleeping?”

“’M ‘wake.”

Her smile broadened. “You’re a terrible liar.”

His huffed breath was almost a laugh, but sleepy, like something he wouldn’t remember in the morning. She thought about looking up at the stars again, but didn’t, choosing instead to count the shadowed silvery spots against the tan hide of his neck. She thought he’d drifted back to sleep, but he surprised her by asking, “Shepard?”

“Mmm?”

“Did you need me for something?”

She did laugh, low and soft in the dark. “You know, you always ask that. In the exact same way. Same tone, same inflection. Every time.”

He rolled over to face her, lifting a hand to brush the hair away from her cheek. His fingers lingered against her cheekbone, her temple, so tender it made her eyes sting. “Because it always makes you smile. At the very least.”

She pressed her cheek into the warmth of his palm, breathing deeply.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

_What isn’t?_  Miscommunication and infighting and traitors and allied forces fighting each other instead of the greater threat. All of it running like water through her hands, like sand, and everyone looking to her to hold on, to keep things together. How was she meant to hold water? How was she meant to hold sand? “I’m scared,” she admitted. He curved his knuckle against the corner of her eye, catching the tear she would not have shed anywhere else, with anyone else watching. “I’m terrified.”

“I know,” he said simply. “So am I.” His mandibles twitched into a brief, wry smile. “Least we know we’re not crazy.”

She lifted a querying brow, and though she doubted he could see it clearly in the shadows, he continued, “Things we’re facing? Pretty sure it’d be insane to be fearless in the face of it.” He dropped his hand from her face, but only so he could wrap the arm around her and pull her closer, his palm rubbing circles against the too-tense muscles of her back. She closed her eyes, resting her forehead against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, feeling the rise and fall of his breath, all synchronous with the stroke of his hand against her spine. “We’ll get through this, Shepard.”

“We always do.” She leaned up enough to kiss him. “You always say that the same way, too.”

“And are you smiling?”

“Mmm,” she said, smiling.

“Then it worked,” he said, returning her kiss with one of his own.


	34. Capernoited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, ME3, set during the end of the Citadel party. Garrus/FemShep  
> Word meme ficlet: Capernoited: Slightly intoxicated or tipsy.

“You’re drunk.”

“Am not,” he protested.

Her soft laugh was followed by the press of her warm lips to his scarred cheek. She kissed a trail from mandible to nose to brow. He did not purr. Self-respecting turians didn’t _purr_. He made a… pleased noise in the back of his throat. A thrum. Thrumming was not purring. But, Spirits, her lips felt good. “You dropped into bed like a boulder and didn’t even take off your armor.”

Her loose hair fell to tickle his face as she leaned over him. She faint aroma of the perfume she only wore on special occasions mixed with scents of expensive hair soap and her warm skin. He swallowed hard, mostly to stop pur—thrumming. “Traynor mixes mean drinks, but I’m not drunk. _Slightly_ inebriated. Maybe.”

“You booby-trapped my house.”

He blinked his eyes open—damn, he hadn’t even remembered closing them—and tried for a glower. By the smile on her face his attempt at menacing was not successful. She sat back on her heels beside him, grinning one of her more maniacal grins. He groaned. “Mostly Zaeed’s idea.”

“Sure. Because Zaeed _loves_ the subtle approach. Explosive microfilaments set in a glass wall, Garrus? Please. You might as well sign your name on the bottom right corner.”

It was a little hard to focus on her when she moved. It was much harder to focus _at all_ when she hiked up the skirt of her tight dress and straddled his abdomen, the better to grin down at him. “Your windows are too big,” he mumbled. “Structural weakness. Could fly a skycar right through them.”

Somehow his hands moved of their own volition and settled on her thighs. Her bare thighs. Her smooth, strong, bare thighs.

Not, of course, that he could feel their smooth, strong bareness through his armored gloves.

“Garrus?” she asked, “Why are you wearing armor at a party?”

“Shepard?” he replied, mimicking her tone, “When was the last time you did something normal—sushi lunches, parties, walking down the street—without having someone shoot at you?”

Her lips parted and she tilted her head before giving one swift nod. “Noted and accepted.”

Argument _clearly_ won, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Damn, but her bed was soft. It almost made him forget the way the room was ever so slightly spinning. Traynor. It was always the quiet ones. _Try this, Garrus_ , she’d said, with her bright, expensive-toothbrush smile. _It’s called a Heat Sink. You’ll love it._

It had tasted horrible. But somehow he’d had three. At least.

Shit, maybe four.

And James with his shots. Not to mention Javik. Who knew Javik had it in him—

“However,” Shepard continued pointedly, in her most obnoxious _I’m Commander Shepard and I’m about to say something you shouldn’t argue with so you’d better pay attention_ voice, “I think we need to establish a rule. A very. Important. Rule.”

Oh. She was doing something with her hands. Unclasping clasps and unsealing seals. Damn. She was almost as efficient as he was at getting him out of armor. She punctuated each word by settling a piece of his kit beside the bed. “You can wear armor to dinner,” she said, freeing him of boots and greaves and breastplate, “you can wear armor into the shower, for all I care.” Shoulders and arms and ahh, yes, hands, and maybe she had a point because _she_ wasn’t wearing armor and her scrap of a dress left so _much_ skin bare and she was _so soft_ and—“But you cannot, under any circumstances, keep wearing this damned _heavy plate_ to _bed._ ”

Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, pupils dilated. Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, and it took all the willpower left to him not to sit up and repeat the motion with his own tongue.

It wasn’t Traynor’s demon drinks at the root of his intoxication now.

Swifter than she was expecting, if her surprised little squeak was any indication, Garrus sat up, swept her into arms freed of their armor, and rolled them to the other side of the bed. She smirked up at him, looking immensely proud of herself, and hooked one of those long, smooth, strong, bare legs over his hip, pulling him even closer.

“How,” he asked, “did you manage to avoid Traynor?”

“A hostess has to keep her head,” Shepard replied pertly. “And besides, someone had to be sober in case of sudden enemy incursion. I hear my windows are too big.”

“And now?”

She smiled, running her fingers down his side, trailing fingertips like kisses across his waist. “And now I have an exploding glass wall and a hot-tub that may or may not be acid to protect me, a devastatingly handsome turian in my bed, and I am _off-duty._ ”


	35. Fight Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus & Grunt, ME3 Citadel DLC, Shepard POV  
> (Verb meme: Fight ME, one character fighting another. Sort of.)

Grunt lifted both arms triumphantly above his head and shouted, “I AM KROGAN!” as the crowd roared appreciatively. Shepard and Garrus, perched side-by-side on one of the higher levels, watched him barrel through the first round of enemies, leaving chaos and holographic corpses in his wake.

“So,” Garrus said, leaning next to Shepard on the railing, his shoulder just barely brushing hers, “are we going to help?”

“And ruin his fun?” She tilted a crooked smile his way even as she angled her pistol to take out the Cerberus trooper creeping up behind him. In the arena below, Grunt headbutted one enemy while shooting his shotgun blindly and taking out another pair. The kill counter pinged happily as the numbers rose.

“I suppose fake Cerberus lackeys don’t really compare to taking out a thresher maw.” Garrus lifted his rifle, took aim, and across the arena a fake Centurion’s head exploded into pixels.

“On foot,” Shepard reminded him, shaking her head and adding another kill to the VI’s ongoing tally. “The Armax Arena missed a real opportunity there.”

“Yes,” Garrus agreed dryly. “An  _opportunity_.”

“Hey, if you’re looking for entertainment…”

He chuckled, and Shepard holstered her pistol, switching back to her rifle and peeking through her scope. She refrained from taking the shot when she saw Grunt charging across the floor toward the hapless and doomed Combat Engineer. Its destruction a moment later heralded the end of the round, and Shepard swung herself over the railing. She smirked when Garrus followed a second later and froze, turning in a slow circle, obviously baffled by her disappearance.

“Uh,” he said, “did you get a cloak upgrade I don’t know about?”

She laughed, and he turned toward the sound, his mandibles twitching. “Shep—”

Her hand shot out and she dragged him behind the panel that was hiding her. Raising a finger to indicate silence, she stood on her toes and pressed her lips to each mandible and then the flat of his nose. He hummed his pleasure as the arena VI announced the second round, and Grunt bellowed another grandiose claim of krogan superiority at the crowd. “Let him have a minute,” she whispered. She smiled against his mouth. “Let  _me_  have a minute. It’s not exactly life and death out there, and you are looking distractingly attractive today.”

He tilted his head, in a familiar half-embarrassed, half-cocky gesture. “Aren’t the cameras going to—”

“Blind spot,” she said.

He snorted.

She rolled her eyes. “Garrus, please. I’m an infiltrator. I… infiltrated. We’re off the grid. Promise.”

“I did wonder how you were managing to keep coming back without getting bored. Figured you must be entertaining yourself with more than the holographic enemies.”

“I’m going to get a better score than Aria T’Loak if it fake kills me, Vakarian.”

“Says the woman making out with her boyfriend instead of fighting.”

She made a face. “Never going to beat Aria on a round like this. Nah, Grunt was the one who wanted to tear apart some Cerberus soldiers. I think he figured out they were never that keen on me opening his tank in the first place. And he asked so nicely.”

An answering krogan battlecry shook the rafters. Shepard used the distraction to kiss Garrus again. This time he answered in kind, and they only broke apart once the round-ending bell clanged again.

“Right,” she said. “Want to see if we can close down round three in thirty seconds or less?”

“If it means we continue this at the apartment sooner rather than later?” He grinned. “I’m right behind you, Shepard. But you’re in charge of making sure Grunt doesn’t follow us home.”


	36. Agelast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joker POV, Joker/EDI, ends just before the beginning of A Handful of Dust  
> Word meme ficlet: Agelast: A person who never laughs

He picks up the nickname in flight school. At best it’s a jibe, at worst an insult, but he doesn’t care. They can call him whatever they want. He’s not here to make friends. He’s not here to spend his weekends drinking and dancing and fucking, only to come crawling grey-faced to class, too hungover to feel the subtlest movements of the ships they practice in.

Every ship dances, and the best part is you don’t need legs to lead. So yeah, he doesn’t laugh much. He’s too damned busy learning all the really important steps, the fanciest moves. He’s too damned busy being the best.

Let them laugh all they want; he knows he’ll get the last one in the end, when the assignments go out.

#

Later, the nickname makes a different kind of sense, so he lets it stand. Embraces it, even. He finds a kind of solace in the quips and one-liners, the wit that sets him apart. A person called Joker engenders certain expectations, and he’s happy to pretend it’s a mold that fits him.  _Joker_ becomes a kind of armor. He may have unreliable bones, but humor builds him up and protects him, and with a body like his that counts for a hell of a lot. 

It is surprising how often people laugh at his words without realizing he doesn’t ever join them.

#

EDI isn’t a joke. It’s not funny at all. It interferes. If he and the  _Normandy_  are dancing, EDI’s the busybody who keeps cutting in. He might occasionally bend far enough to joke with Shepard about the AI’s presence, but the truth is every joke is a weapon. If he can just cut deep enough, he trusts Shepard will do the right thing and have the AI excised, like the tumor it is.

Shepard doesn’t budge. EDI keeps being EDI. He doesn’t know when he starts thinking of her as  _her_  instead of  _it_ , but he thinks it might align with the first time one of her, “That was a joke, Mr. Moreau,” quips actually startles a real laugh out of him.

It’s not so bad having her around, after that. Not that he’d ever let  _her_  know.

#

At Shepard’s party, Joker dances with the ship in a different way, shuffling along in EDI’s metallic arms. They should be some bad joke’s punchline—he makes her dance in the darkness of space; she physically props him up long enough to dance to Shepard’s bad music—and he laughs softly under his breath. EDI asks why. He says, “The pilot was in love with the ship, and the ship in love with her pilot.”

“And that is a joke?”

“No,” he says. “No, it’s not.”

She doesn’t laugh, and he’s glad. She holds him a little closer. They sway. It’s better than laughter.

#

He laughs when the  _Normandy_  crashes but they  _don’t_  all die in the horrible inferno he’s basically been expecting since the first time a giant sentient ship showed up and started bitching about annihilating them all. He laughs because somehow, against all odds, they’ve  _survived_. He knows he sounds a little crazed, a little manic, but he can’t stop.  _How’s that for a quickstep,_  he thinks,  _how’s that for a jive?_  Kaidan, still standing behind him, doesn’t join in. Well. He’s never been all that big on the humor anyway, Alenko. EDI’ll think it’s funny. But when he turns to say something, EDI’s platform is slumped in her chair, head lolling, eyes open and staring. He waits for her to reboot, restart, come back. Sing Daisy Bell. Something. Anything.

She doesn’t. The laughter dies in his throat. The stillness of the helm under his hands takes on an entirely different meaning.

They haven’t all survived after all.

 _Joke’s on me,_  he thinks. 

He doesn’t know who’s getting the last laugh now, but it sure as shit isn’t him.


	37. Nothing Looks the Way it Should

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan POV, happens roughly concurrent with A Handful of Dust Chapter 2

Nothing looks the way it should. 

Oh, the North Shore mountains are the same, when the clouds clear enough for him to see them, and the water of English Bay still laps at the same shore he used to play on as a child. The same big wooden logs dot the sandy landscape at intervals too even to be quite natural. In the summer, when the sun shines and Vancouver is the most beautiful city in the galaxy, the logs at the beach are claimed by families picnicking and couples holding hands on soft blankets and groups of teenagers screaming and laughing and listening to music too loudly. Each is its own little universe, bounded in a nutshell. Or bounded by a huge old log.

It is not summer now.

On the first day, after the Normandy lands and the crew scatters, a few with salutes but most without acknowledging him at all, after Kaidan stands in front of Admiral Hackett and speaks all the empty words he’s been turning over and over and over again in his head since he told Joker they had to leave, he walks.

The heart of the Alliance camp, ugly prefab buildings and muddy tracks worn into the spring grass, has taken over the space that was once Vanier Park, though nothing very parklike remains. The broken shards of Burrard Bridge jut into empty air above the inlet like skeletal fingers, reaching, reaching, never touching. Not since the Reapers came.

He turns west, away from the bridge, walking along the empty beach. It’s raining, of course, but he’s used to the rain.

He’s alone, but he’s used to that too. If he stays here, maybe he’ll get a dog. A nice, big, friendly one. A retriever, or a lab. Not afraid of a little rain. If he had a dog, he’d have company. He could throw sticks. The dog would always bring them back.

Dogs are good about that. Coming back. Staying.

Kaidan keeps his eyes on the ground. He’s afraid a break in the clouds might show him how different the sky looks. Debris. Damage. What’s left of the Citadel. Forty-five by thirteen kilometers of failure. And success. He doesn’t know what to do with that. At least sand is just sand. Sand he can deal with. Sand he can handle.

Up on the path, a woman jogs past him, humming along to her music, cheeks pink with exertion. Her hair is darker than Shepard’s, pulled back into a longer ponytail, but still he stops abruptly, forced to close his eyes. A dull ache throbs behind his eyes, nothing to do with his implants and everything to do with how little he’s slept, how much he hurts. When he opens his eyes, the jogger is gone, but he can’t get the image of her out of his mind. The golden, glowing city of his youth is grey and lifeless and broken, a ghost of its former glory, and she’s jogging.

Moving on, he thinks. Living.

“Isn’t that what this was for?” he says aloud. The wind steals his words, flings them out across the empty sea, drowns them in the white-tipped waves. A dog could fetch. A dog would push its wet nose into his shaking palm and lick the back of his hand until he smiled and rubbed its ears.

If he stays, maybe he’ll get a dog. A nice, big one. Friendly.

Everyone loves a friendly dog.

He shuffles a few more steps down the beach and sinks down on the damp bark of one of the empty, obliging logs. He stares out over the water and tries not to see the Reaper corpses and the jagged remains of Alliance ships amidst the waves. Tries not to think about old friends. Tries to imagine moving on, living.

“Shepard,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

Nothing looks the way it should.


	38. Anagapesis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard POV, A Handful of Dust outtake/side-story. (The latter part happens concurrently with Chapter Thirteen: The Expected Guest.)  
> Word meme ficlet. Anagapesis: The feeling when someone no longer loves someone they once did.

When she was a little girl, her mother taught her the best way to remember something was to tie a string around her finger. “That way,” Mama said, “when you look at the string, your mind will fill in the blank so you don’t forget.” Her mother smiled as she looped a red ribbon around her index finger and tied it in a bow. “Now you’ll remember to clean your room.” 

She doesn’t have string or ribbons, but she needs to remember. They pluck her memories from her mind like apples from a tree. Some she is more willing to part with than others; these she hands to them easily, while hoarding the rest, trying to keep them safe. On the infrequent occasions they leave her alone and conscious, she pulls individual strands from her head, and winds the long red hairs around her fingers.  _Now you’ll remember,_  she thinks, she orders herself,  _now you’ll remember._

_His laugh. His smirk. The light in his eyes when he looks at me, like he’s been given a gift. Even after all this time. The quiet rumble of his voice as he speaks, low and soft, telling stories he has never told anyone else. The way he leans against the console, the picture of cocky ease. The nervous shift from foot to foot. His hand on my lower back. His cheek pressed to my breast, listening to my heart. His body curled around mine. His fingers in my hair. His terrible taste in music. His excellent taste in guns._

_Forgive the insubordination, he said, but your boyfriend has an order for you. Come back alive._

Never has she been issued an order she wants so desperately to follow.

She will give them whatever they want—anything, anything—if only they leave her this.

But they find the makeshift ribbons, those fine red strands holding her to her memories, and one by one they snip them off. They steal and steal and steal, indiscriminately and with a sick sort of pleasure. They sow seeds of hopelessness and water them with lonely tears, fertilizing them with memories that almost-but-don’t-quite belong to her. In the place of laughter, sickly-sweet fruit grows, bruised and rotten at their cores, until every time she tries to remember joy, only the scent of cloying death pervades. They whisper secrets in her ear, low and soft, until fear replaces bravery, until alien voices make her tremble, until all she knows of love is that it never lasts.

When the turian enters her room, huge and scarred and angry, she shrinks away from him, and does not understand why seeing him reminds her uncomfortably of her mother tying a ribbon around her index finger, once upon a time.  _Now you’ll remember to clean your room._ If she has ever met this turian before, she does not want to remember it. He is too big, too fierce, too intense. Just looking at him makes her uneasy. Still, she puts a hand to her head and the phantom ache of plucked hairs tingles at her scalp. She cannot name the voices whispering in her head.  _Now you’ll remember,_  says one of them.  _Now you’ll remember to come back alive._

It makes her want to scream.

Perhaps, she decides, shivering, already steeling herself to speak, perhaps she will be herself again if he goes, if she doesn’t have to look at him and wonder what’s going on behind those too-sharp eyes.

She will give them whatever they want—anything, anything—if only they give her this.


	39. Haunt Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaius Vakarian and Niva Vakarian, Kaius POV, multiple moments pre, during, and post-ME3  
> (Verb meme: Haunt Me, one character is haunted by another)

It is a bad day.

Niva tosses and turns in her sterile bed, always shifting, never comfortable, as if her very hide is too small, her plates too constricting. Hard as she tries, she cannot escape herself. And she tries. Oh, she tries. This is merely the physical manifestation of a mental cage that’s been shrinking around her for months, for years, choking the life out of her. Choking the  _her_  out of her.

His fingers itch to free her, though he knows the restraints binding her to the bed are necessary. His heart itches to free her from more than the bindings, but he cannot bring himself to do that, either. Because some days are good days, and on those days she looks at him and knows who he is and if there is even one more good day left in her, he cannot be the one to steal it from her.

No. It’s more selfish than that. He cannot bear to steal the possibility of that one good day from himself.

“Forgive me, love,” he whispers. She settles against the buffer of pillows, momentarily still, momentarily peaceful. He knows it will not last long. His hand hovers above her hand but does not dare touch, lest he startle her into distress once more.

Because he cannot touch her, he speaks. “That year on the Citadel,” he says softly, “before Garrus came. The windows hung with cheap, bright fabric not because we couldn’t afford better, but because you liked it. The evening walks through the Presidium, our arms entwined. I never wanted them to end. The month you made a different meal every night.” He laughs, soft and sad. Everything is tinted soft and sad these days, even the good days. She sighs in her waking sleep, but does not stir. “Spirits, Niva. Some of them were so awful.”

_You ate every bite. The katta with no seasoning. All that valara fruit before I realized you hated it. Oh, Kaius. That_ ghastly  _kosekk. Even I couldn’t eat that one. But you, you cleared your plate. Every time._

The words don’t come from the woman on the bed, of course. Merely the ghost of her slightly tethered, a memory held by the weight of his longing for what was.

#

It is a bad day.

The doctors say Solana should lose her leg. They speak of prosthetics and cloning, but their subharmonics betray them. What they do not say is that it would have been kinder to leave her, kinder to grant her the death she’d begged for when she fell. The Reapers are everywhere. The Reapers are winning. Does a lost leg matter, in the long run? Does anything?

He wants to admonish them, but is certain his own voice will echo their hopelessness, their resignation.

He closes his eyes and imagines Niva’s hand on his fringe, on his shoulder, though he can no longer recall the precise weight of her fingers or the texture of her hide. When he inhales, he almost catches the scent of her under the sterile antiseptic smell of the rescue ship’s small medbay.

_She will survive this._

_Will she? Will any of us?_

When she answers, there’s no mistaking the crisp bite of rage. Not  _you forgot the chores I asked you to do_  anger, either. He’d seen this anger leveled at a general, once, and the the general had been the one who apologized. Profusely. And at length.  _Don’t you dare, Kaius Vakarian. Don’t you dare stop fighting now._

“Are you okay, sir?” the young doctor asks, his subharmonics still tremulous with despair.

“Do what you must. Take the leg.” Kaius’ gaze snaps up, sharp and disapproving. The doctor takes a step back and his hand hovers between them, halfway to an instinctive salute even though Kaius is no longer military, no longer C-Sec. Retired. What does retirement mean in a time like this? “And mind your tone. We’re not defeated yet, lad. We are not defeated yet.”

Fingers ghost along the curve of his cowl, gentle as a breeze, and the phantom scent of her beloved kiris flowers teases the faintest of smiles from him.

#

It is a bad day.

Garrus has grown thin in the months since last Kaius saw him, diminished beneath the too-heavy bulk of his armor. Grief hangs on his son like a mantle, but stronger still is the rage simmering beneath it, burning him to ashes from within. He searches the man standing before him for some echo of the little boy who’d tripped over his own too-large feet in his haste to greet him on his infrequent trips home, but sees only resolve so hard and inflexible it will certainly shatter beneath the slightest pressure, like an ill-forged blade.

_I will lose him to this,_  he despairs.  _You would know what to say, love. You always understood him so much better than I._

Her sigh comes from far away, disappointed and encouraging all at once. _Who better than you understands him now?_ He imagines the exasperation in her eyes, the cant of her head, the angle of her jutting hip. The memory is potent, almost real, but he knows she’ll vanish again the moment he moves, speaks, breathes.  _Tell him you’re sorry. Like you mean it. The way you feel it._

So he does. “I’m sorry, son.” Just that. No embellishment, no caveats, as laid bare as he has ever been. Garrus rocks back on his heels, and Kaius thinks—he hopes—the heat of rage settles a little in his son, cools a little.

_Just so,_  she says, the memory of her voice wrapped around him with all the intimacy of an embrace.  _Just so. Not such a very bad day after all._

Not such a very bad day after all.


	40. Kill Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solana Vakarian/Naxus Fedorian, Solana POV  
> (Verb meme: Kill Me, one character killing another)

Cipritine is burning.

Solana refuses to panic, even though nothing is happening the way she planned for. She isn’t home, for one thing, or at Naxus’ apartment. She has caches of supplies in both places, useless to her now. Communications traffic is either down or jammed, even on the lines Garrus had his task force bolster. She cannot raise her father or Naxus. Garrus is on Menae, too far to help her, but she tries anyway. Of course she can’t get through.

Warning sirens wail through the smoke, their sound sharper and higher pitched than the lower screech she realizes come from the Reapers. The streets are oddly calm; the benefit, she supposes as she flits from shadow to shadow, cover to cover, of a population universally trained to stand fast in the face of attack, and to never show their backs. Turians die silently and stoically and facing forward.

Solana doesn’t want to die.

She doesn’t realize how devious an enemy the Reapers truly are until she comes face to face with the first of the mutated turians. Training notwithstanding, she freezes, just for a moment, looking for familiar colony markings or a recognizable curve of crest or mandible. The creature is a stranger (she hopes, she thinks). Before her cloak wears off, she lifts the pistol she’s been carrying non-stop since Garrus left for Palaven’s moon, and she puts a round between the turia—the creature’s eyes. They were blue once, she thinks as the head explodes into shards of blood and plate and bone. Like her father’s, like her brother’s. But it was neither of them. She’s sure of that. She’s sure.

She swallows hard, keeps moving. The smoke makes things harder, but she trained in smoke, a long time ago. All turian forces train in smoke, in rain, in snow. She keeps her head low and her tactical cloak up as often as she can, even though she knows the smoke will catch the edges and betray her with ripples if anyone’s looking close enough.

It takes three days to retrace steps that had taken half an hour on transit. Before. She stops looking too closely at the faces of the mutant turians she’s forced to kill. She doesn’t stop trying to raise someone—anyone—on her comms. The crackle of static in her ear is almost as familiar now as the wail of the dying sirens. Fewer now; the Reapers and their insidious lasers must be targeting them. The Reaper horns only get louder and more insistent and more numerous. Solana tries not to think about that. The air doesn’t clear. She has to look at her omni-tool to see if it’s night or day. Her throat tightens when she looks at the smoke-shrouded sky and cannot see Menae overhead. She blames the fires. She tries not to think about her brother. Fails, mostly.

She can’t get to him, but she can get to his Palaven headquarters.

_To Naxus_ , she thinks, before stomping hard on the hope even the fleeting thought of his name raises. She can’t afford that brand of hope right now; she’s afraid of the repercussions should it prove fruitless. Cipritine is burning, and determination to survive is better nourishment than dreaming of better times.

It takes another day. She doesn’t realize how afraid she’d been of finding a smoking pit where once the building stood until she sees it mostly whole, rising like a beacon before her. She blinks rapidly, her eyes stinging with smoke and exhaustion, and then she stumbles forward, pistol in hand and tactical cloak engaged.

The building is empty. Battlestations unmanned, comms crackling, console screens flickering as the lights overhead crack. She finds him at the heart of the building. Last time she’d been here, it had been a bustle of activity—a few days ago, a week? Certainly no more than a week, but oh what a difference a week could make—but now it is eerily silent, the huge screens dark and the tactical map a sea of red.

Naxus turns, and she gasps as the illicit spark of hope turns to ice and despair in her veins.

“Solana,” the creature says. Grates, with no subharmonics to interpret. It’s not him. It’s not. “I’m—”

But she doesn’t pause, doesn’t stop to listen to what the Reaper turian—not Naxus, not anymore—says. She lifts her pistol and shoots. Misses. Shoots again. Closes her eyes a second too late, so she’s forced to see that face—those markings, that crest, those mandibles, oh  _Spirits_ —vanish in a mist of gore and words unspoken. She’s at his side even before what’s left of him hits the ground. To make sure he—it’s dead, she tells herself. The shape of his—its body is wrong now, but she still sees him in the hands, in the curve of the cowl. She curls her hands into fists, her talons scraping against the bloody armor, and she doesn’t care if the damned Reapers hear her scream.

Solana wakes choking on that scream, her trembling hands clenched into fists in the bedsheets, digits still hot with phantom blood. “Just a bad dream,” she says into the dim blue light of the cabin she’s still not quite able to think of as hers. The now-familiar hum of the  _Normandy_ soothes her. No smoke, no sirens. Still, she wipes her palms desperately against the soft fabric sheets, and sniffs hard, trying to banish the imaginary scent of Cipritine burning.

“He’s fine,” she tells herself, cupping that tiny spark of hope and refusing to let it be smothered, no matter what logic and likelihood tell her. “He’s out there and he’s fine.”


	41. Tell Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solana Vakarian/Naxus Fedorian, Solana POV, pre-ME3  
> (Verb meme: Tell Me, one character confesses something to another)

Solana almost turned back a dozen times, two dozen.

When Naxus opened his door his face lit up, and regret turned her blood to ice. But didn’t shake her determination. “Sol! You didn’t send a message. I’d’ve ordered dinner in if I knew you were coming.” He stepped close enough to wrap her in an embrace.

She wanted nothing more than to sink into the comfort of his arms, but she took a little step backward instead, and he froze. Joy drained from his face, leaving him stiff-mandibled and staring. “Don’t,” he pleaded, both voice and subharmonics eerily devoid of emotion. “Please, Solana. Please don’t do this.”

She lifted her chin, steeling herself. After days and weeks and  _months_  spent turning this problem over and over and _over_ , she couldn’t see any other way. Naxus’ hands fell back to his sides, the tips of his talons twitching against his legs as though searching for some handhold to keep him from falling. He was a good climber; he’d made it all the way up that rock-face one time when they were stationed on Digeris. He was going to teach her, he declared, fear of heights or no fear of heights. He was so certain, so fearless, she’d almost been looking forward to it. Fear of heights or no fear of heights.

She swallowed hard, pulling her mandibles tight to her cheeks and shoving the memories away. “You deserve better than what I’m in the position to give you, Naxus,” she said. Her subharmonics trembled, but the words were sincere. She’d practiced them until she could say them without keening.

He closed his eyes, rocking back as if she’d reached out and physically struck him. “I don’t—Solana. Sol. This is—this is all backwards. This isn’t about  _deserving_  or status or tiers. I lo—”

“I’ve made my decision,” she insisted with more sharpness than she intended, interrupting him before his words could weaken her resolve. If she wasn’t sharp, if she let him  _finish_ , she was going to give in, and she couldn’t. She couldn’t do that to him. “If you—I can only ask that you respect it, Naxus. I’m not going to change my mind.”

She turned then, heading back the way she’d come. His voice arrested her before she could disappear into the elevator. “Of course I’ll respect it,” he said. Sorrow made his voice rough. “But—but you’re my best friend, Sol, and I think I’m yours, and we were friends before we were… before we were anything else. No—no matter what else happens, I will always, always be here for you. Unconditionally, and without expectation. You— _you_ deserve better than suffering alone. No matter what you tell yourself.”

“Friends, then,” she replied, as the elevator opened and she stepped within.

Once the elevator door slid shut, blocking out his grieving, loving, shattered expression, Solana put her face in her hands and forced herself to breathe deep and slow, deep and slow to keep from howling.

#

Solana almost turned back a dozen times, two dozen.

Naxus didn’t answer his door right away. Probably out, she realized; she should’ve sent a message. Foolish to think he’d just be here, waiting. She was just about to turn away—probably for the best, anyway, no matter what kind of seize the day nonsense her brother kept trying to fill her head with—when the door swung inward and Naxus stood blinking on the other side. Better. She’d  _woken_  him; she recognized the blur of sleep in his eyes.

“Sorry—” she began, even as a smile overspread his face and he said, “Solana!”

He scrubbed the heel of his hand against his eyes as if scrubbing could rid them of their grogginess, and the gesture was so familiar she felt her breath catch in her chest. “Can I—do you mind if I come in?”

He stepped back so quickly he appeared, just for a moment, uncharacteristically graceless. She almost smiled, but her stomach was doing some kind of hideous club dance, and she couldn’t quite manage it. “Does, uh, your brother need me for something?” Naxus asked. She stepped into the living room, ignoring the slightly-open door to the bedroom, and settled herself on a low chair. “You know, you only ever do that thing with your hands when you’re anxious.”

“What thing with—” She glanced down and, sure enough, found her hands twisted in her lap. “I—” She coughed to clear her throat, and before she could bother asking, Naxus strode off to the kitchen and returned with water.

Sinking into the chair next to her, so close their knees nearly touched, he said, “Not a work thing, then, I take it.”

“Has the date been set?” she asked. Blurted, really. He looked so genuinely confused that she forced herself to explain, “I heard your parents arranged a match. Calia Veratus? It’s good. That’s… good. I just… wondered when the ceremony was.”

His eyes narrowed and his mandibles gave a decidedly strained twitch. “Sol—”

“So I could send a gift.”

“You’ve got to find a better source of information,” he said carefully. “A match  _was_  spoken of, and my parents perhaps took things a few steps too far, but it was never finalized. I couldn’t go through with it. Couldn’t do that to her, when it came right down to it.”

“Calia’s a very eligible—”

“Calia’s not you.” He winced, ducking his head. “Forgive me. I wasn’t going to—”

“I was wrong.”

He lifted his eyes to meet hers just long enough for her to catch the flicker of hope in them. “About?” he asked cautiously.

“Thinking we could be friends,” she began, forcing her anxious hands apart and grabbing hold of her knees to keep from wringing them together again.

“We are friends,” he insisted, not bothering to hide the note of pleading. “That’s never changed. I won’t—Sol, I swear I didn’t mean to bring it up. I—Spirits, I’ve done so well, haven’t I? Please don’t do this. It won’t happen again.”

She shook her head, trying to wrangle her thoughts into some kind of order. This wasn’t at  _all_  like she’d rehearsed. “No. No, I—it’s all backwards. That’s not what I meant. Just—”

“Solana—”

“Please. Please let me finish. I’m saying it all wrong.” She took a deep, shuddering breath and wondered if it was possible for a conversation to induce cardiac arrest. Her heart certainly ached enough for it to seem plausible. “I didn’t want to be a burden. I didn’t want you to come to resent me. I thought nothing could be as bad as resentment growing where all that love had been. So I… so I dug up the whole plant and threw it in the trash and I’m sorry. Spirits, Naxus, I’m so sorry. I was trying to do the right thing and I hurt you. I never wanted that. You’re the last person in the whole galaxy I’d ever want to hurt.”

She permitted herself a brief glance his way but he sat frozen, not even blinking, hardly breathing. As she watched, a shudder bent his spine and hunched his shoulders. “So you think you could—you think you might be able to… to love me? Again?”

“Spirits, Naxus. I never  _stopped_.”

The grin that overspread his face was so bright, so unfettered, it made her realize just how careful he’d been around her since she broke things off. She couldn’t help echoing it, it was so contagious. He grasped her hand, tugging her gently up and into his arms, and for the first time in months she felt— _really felt_ —that, imminent Reapers or not, she was home.


	42. Haunt Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashley POV ME1, Morinth POV ME2, Shepard POV ME3  
> (Verb meme: Haunt Me, one character haunted by another.)

_Death closes all._

It’s the wrong time for poetry. Her lips twist with the irony.  _But something ere the end._ Hell, all the Tennyson she knows, maybe it’s actually the perfect time. If this isn’t some work of noble note she doesn’t know what is. Sweat stinging. Hands steady. Bullet after bullet after bullet.

Her whole life’s not flashing before her eyes, just moments. Happy ones. Laughing with her sisters. Singing in church—she always liked the singing best. That last Christmas dinner they were all together, wearing paper crowns and reciting the poetry that only came out once too many glasses of wine had been drunk. Moments. So many good moments. She was lucky. Funny to think that now. Another geth explodes in a shower of sparks and white fluid and twisted metal.

_Not unbecoming men that strove with gods._

_Abby. Lynn. Sarah_ , she thinks, trying not to imagine her sisters’ inevitable stoic stiffness when the message comes in. Better to remember poetry, and Christmases, and too much wine.  _Oh, Sarah, I’m sor—_

#

Sometimes, just as she’s about to lean in for that first intoxicating kiss, that first intoxicating rush of skin on skin so much, so much,  _so much_ better than anything that comes in a bottle can give her, she remembers her mother. Not the way she is now, cold, empty, so very hard, but the warm soft arms and the sweet low laugh, the fingers that could always find the itchy spot in the middle of her back, the lips that pressed gentle kisses to her brow and told the best bedtime stories.

When she leans in to kiss the woman from Afterlife—oh, this one, this one will taste  _so sweet_ , she’s  _divine_ —and the door opens, she thinks the figure is another unwanted memory intruding on an otherwise perfect moment. But this is not Mother of the soft arms and sweet lullabies. This is Mother who says no, no,  _no._

Some small part, the ghost of the girl who spent forty years laughing with her sisters and loved by the woman this monster used to be thinks  _Mama, please, Mama, I’m sorry_ just before the blast of biotic energy turns the rest to battle and blood and endings, once and for all.

#

Death keeps her company in the whispering woods, Death lives in the eyes of the little boy she could not save, Death twinkles out at her from the stars she can no longer bear to look at. They are old comrades now and have walked many miles together, though Death’s comfort is cold, and will force her to break promises she did not—does not—want to break (your boyfriend has an order for you).

She’s looking out the window— _best seats in the house_ —expecting endings and Death says  _not yet._

_What do you need me to do?_ she replies, and does not die.

Death helps her lift her arm and point her gun, helps her pull the trigger again and again and again. Death holds her as the blast envelops her in a cloud of heat and throws her back, up.  _A_ _way_.

_Not again._ She wants to bend, to twist, to reach for a broken oxygen line even though there’s nothing there, even though Death will wear a different face this time.

_No,_  Death commands.  _Come back alive._

When she hits the ground, she’s thinking about beaches. She’s thinking about seashells. Much better than endings. Much better than ghosts.

_I’m trying,_  she thinks.  _I’m trying._


	43. Cook Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, Post-ME3 (so, AUish, since everything post-game is AU until AHOD is finished), Shepard POV  
> (Verb meme: Cook Me, one character cooking for another)

“You know, we could’ve just ordered in.”

Shepard glared at Garrus, flattening her palms against the counter. She hoped she didn’t look as wild-eyed as she felt. If his amused expression was any indication, though, she definitely did. “No. I can do this. I went toe-to-tentacle with Harbinger. I can defeat this.”

The way Garrus cleared his throat indicated he was choking down laughter. Bastard. She definitely picked up the mirth in his subharmonics when he said, “You can defeat… dinner?”

She narrowed her eyes. “If you’re not going to help, you can get out of the kitchen.”

He sighed as he rolled his shoulders. “Okay. First off? That pile of fruit to your left? My dad hates it.”

Half-strangled, she cried, “ _What_? But—but the turian at the market said valara was a delicacy! She gave me a  _recipe_. I have a  _menu_!”

Garrus came up behind her and slid his arms around her waist, bending to nuzzle his mandible against her burning cheek. “Luckily, you also have a resident turian. We can adjust.”

She let herself lean into the embrace for a second, but then panic reasserted itself and she stared at the various and sundry ingredients in mute horror. She couldn’t remember if the weird purple thing was supposed to go in the dessert or the main course, and she didn’t even remember buying the bag of …seeds? Nuts? Rocks? Shit. They looked like rocks. Why the hell would she have bought rocks for  _dinner_? “Oh my God,” she breathed. “Are they even dextro? Garrus, what if I poison your family?”

She felt the low rumble of his laugh against her back. “Wouldn’t be the first time. My mom almost killed Adrien Victus, once, with a dinner.”

“She didn’t.”

“ _Quite_  the scandal. Hell, if he’d been primarch  _then_ , she might’ve ended up accused of attempted assassination.” One arm still holding her close, he reached down and started rearranging ingredients on the counter. “Oh. You’re not making skota, are you?”

She was  _Commander Shepard_ , and Commander Shepard didn’t  _whimper_ , but she did make a… whimper-like sound. “Why? Does your dad hate that too?”

“It’s one of his favorites. But you have to add some vatha.”

“Do I even have that?”

He pushed one of the bottles of spices across the counter toward her. “You do. Probably for… I’m guessing chittka? But my mom made a mean skota, and she claimed vatha was her secret ingredient. Won’t taste right if you don’t add it.”

She didn’t realize her shoulders had crept anxiously up around her ears until Garrus settled his palms on them and gently nudged them down again. “Shepard,” he soothed, “they’ll appreciate the effort. I promise.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should order in. I just… I don’t want to mess this up.”

“And waste all these perfectly good ingredients?” He moved to stand beside her, shucking off his gloves. “You chop those taskas.” She blinked at him helplessly. “The purple things. I’ll start the chittka.” Bumping his hip lightly against hers, he added, “We’ll get through this, Shepard. We always do. Now pass me that container of vattis.”

He paused a few seconds later, hand freezing mid-stir. “Shepard? What are _you_  going to eat?”

She burst into startled laughter, and rose to her toes, pressing a kiss to his cheek in an attempt to banish his obvious concern. She’d been so focused on getting the dextro menu just right she hadn’t even thought about it. “Uh, peanut butter and jam, evidently.” He flicked his mandibles in silent question. “Old Earth delicacy. Much easier than skota.”


	44. Nurse Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, Shepard POV, post-ME3 (AUish)  
> (Verb meme: Nurse Me, one character taking care of another)

“This was a terrible idea.”

Garrus looked up at her miserably. “It was a fantastic idea.”

“Says the turian dying on the beach he so desperately wanted to retire to. We can’t even  _visit_  without catastrophe following on our heels.”

He coughed, grimaced, and his mandibles gave a weary flick. “It’s hardly the Omega plague, Shepard. I’ll be fine.”

She frowned, but didn’t look up from the simmering soup. Turians couldn’t eat chicken noodle, but her research indicated this was the next best thing. If it overheated it would turn bitter, though, and he had problems enough without her adding the insult of bitter soup to the injury of bed-bound illness. “I could call for—”

His chuckle stopped her. “What, evac? We’re on vacation, Shepard. This isn’t a hot zone. We don’t need backup.”

“Chakwas—”

“Is also on vacation. Everyone’s on vacation. I don’t need a doctor.” He cleared his throat, and flared a grin. “You know what would make me feel better?”

She dished the soup up carefully, arranging the bowl and cutlery and glass of water just so on the tray. “Drugs from the  _Normandy_ ’s medbay?”

“I was thinking fresh air. Relax on one of those lounger things. Eat soup.” Even sick, it was impossible to mistake his leer as he smirked at her. “Watch my nurse splash around in the water.”

Shepard snorted, but a smile pulled at her lips. “Let me guess: bathing suit optional?”

“Now that you mention it…”

“Well,” she muttered, with a fake glower and no small amount of genuine relief, bending to press a kiss to his brow. “I guess you can’t be  _that_  sick, if you’re still thinking about sex.”


	45. Wed Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, various times ME3/post-ME3 (AUish), Garrus POV  
> (Verb meme: Wed Me, two characters marrying each other. Or talking about it. Three people asked, so here are three times Shepard and Garrus spoke about marriage.)

“Garrus,” Shepard cooed, slurring the middle of his name. Her features contorted into a bizarrely exaggerated grimace. “Garrus, Garrus, Garrus. So serious. Gimme a smile, Garrus.”

His mandibles flicked halfheartedly, but not in anything that, even generously, could have been termed a smile. “Just how strong are the painkillers she’s on?”

Chakwas frowned, checking the readout on the machine. It beeped cheerily at her. Cheery was okay. Cheery was better than that screaming flatline he’d been forced to hear earlier, trapped on the other side of the medbay door. “It’s the bloody cybernetics. They metabolize the more commonplace ones like they’re nothing.” Shepard was humming now, terribly off-key, and staring at her own fingers as if they were the most interesting things she’d ever seen. “This dose may have been a little on the excessive side.”

Garrus paced to the opposite side of the medbay, opening and closing his hands into impotent fists at his sides. In the mess, several crew members pretended to go back to work as soon as they noticed him. He could hardly blame them for their distraction. Only hours ago, he’d come barreling through with their commander in his arms, the silence broken only by the wet drip of her blood on the floor, and he hadn’t been the only one who’d been terrified it was all too little too late. “That fucking Banshee came out of nowhere. I thought—”

He didn’t need to say what he’d thought; the evidence was clear enough in the hours of surgery the doctor had needed to perform to save her. He glanced down at the mess of his blood-caked armor—all hers, all hers—and shook his head. She’d been making a smart-ass remark about him lagging behind— _Come on, Garrus, these husks aren’t going to shoot themselves_ —and then she’d screamed. Maybe he’d screamed too. He’d certainly never dispatched one of those monstrous Reaper asari so fast. Not fast enough.

The doctor slipped him a reassuring smile. “She’s going to be fine, Garrus. She wouldn’t be awake and… chatty, if she weren’t going to be fine.”

“Hey, Doc.” As whispers went, it was absurdly loud. They could probably hear Shepard whispering down in Engineering. “Garrus asked if I wanted to be a one-turian woman an’ I said yes, so d’you think that means we’re married?”

“I’m not certain, Commander,” Chakwas soothed. Garrus heard the doctor’s unvoiced laughter loud and clear, and her eyes shone with barely suppressed mirth as she glanced up at him. “Perhaps you’d best ask him.”

“Oh. Right.” Shepard turned her head, blinking huge, bleary, bloodshot eyes. She was still pale, but better. Not nearly as bad as she’d been. Spirits, there’d been a lot of blood. He still reeked of it. He hoped someone had thought to clean the floor. “Garrus, ‘r’we married now?”

“Shepard—”

“Shepard and Garrus, sitting in a tree,” she sing-songed. Then she laughed, but the laugh made her wince and the doctor clucked disapprovingly. “Don’ worry, I’ll ‘splain it later. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

“She won’t remember any of this later,” Chakwas insisted. “I daresay you’re safe from children’s rhymes and painkiller-induced marriage proposals.”

“He has dinosaur feet,” Shepard said very seriously, even as her eyelids began to droop, aided by the elcor-grade sedatives. “But I kinda like ‘em.”

#

On their way to check in with C-Sec, they passed several posing couples on the Presidium. Two human women in long, white dresses; a man in an Alliance uniform with his arm around a grinning man in civilian formal wear; a man and woman flanked by friends, all of them sporting flowers of various kinds and arrangements. Shepard smiled as they passed a human woman and her asari partner, but they were so busy gazing at each other they didn’t even notice her.

“Busy here today,” Garrus remarked.

“Must be preparing to ship out.”

He tilted his head, confused, his mandibles asking a silent question.

“Wartime weddings,” she said, her voice sadder than her smile would have had him think. “An age-old tradition. Make a memory to hold onto when you’re up nights dreading a uniform at the door wearing a grim expression and carrying a letter and a posthumous medal.”

“You think that’s what’s happening here? All of them?”

“I don’t think,” Shepard said, the backs of her fingers brushing his. He didn’t think it was accidental. “I know.” She sighed. “Let’s swing by the Apollo and have wine sent over.”

“Do you have any idea how many regulations prohibit the public consumption of intoxicants on the Presidium?”

“Spectre authority, Officer Vakarian,” she said, winking and punching him lightly on the arm. “Might as well make it count.”

#

“So, what do you think?” Garrus blurted.  _Nice. Very smooth, Vakarian._

“About?” She leaned against him comfortably, and he curled an arm around her shoulders, pulling her even closer.

“Should we, uh, make it official?”

She smiled up at him, her eyes wide and shining in the moonlight. The lap of waves against the shore played unnervingly soothing counterpart to the pounding of his heart. “What, you mean get married? Have a bonding ceremony? A little of both?”

He nodded, his throat suddenly tight. Strange how, even after all this time, she still had that effect on him. She flattened her palm against his scarred cheek and pressed herself up with her other hand to get the leverage she needed to kiss him. “Sure, if you want,” she said, her voice a low, thrilling purr. “But as far as I’m concerned, it’s already a done deal. One-turian-woman, remember? You’re kinda stuck with me.”

He chuckled, giving an answering nuzzle to her cheek. “That wasn’t exactly what I was asking. Then.”

“I know,” she said, shifting to kiss him on the mouth, sweet and insistent and full of promises, “but it’s what  _I_  meant when I answered.”


	46. Quib-Quib

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, Shepard/Garrus, Solana/Naxus, let's call this future AU, since the current fates of most of these characters are either up in the air or unknown ;)

Garrus was already thinking about what-- _who_ \--they were about to meet, when Shepard grabbed his arm, lurched them both to a stop, and hissed, "Oh my God, Garrus, what  _is_ that thing?"

Garrus, shocked, felt his mandibles flare wide. "Shepard, he's your  _nephew_. That's no way to--"

She smacked his arm and pointed. "Not the baby, you idiot. The... thing the baby is... it's like the Mako and the Hammerhead had a baby and added a Reaper laser eye just for kicks."

He followed the line of her arm and saw what she did: his sister stood behind a small... yes, clearly it was a tank, Naxus looking vaguely uncomfortable beside her. Solana, however, was all but glowing, nudging the, uh, baby tank? along to meet them.

Shepard snickered. "That's it. I'm calling it the  _Quib-Quib._ That is  _definitely_  a  _Quib-Quib._ "

"If she hears you, she's going to--"

Solana said, "If I hear what?"

"Uh," Garrus replied, eloquently.

Naxus saved him with a well-timed, "Sir. Ma'am." Shepard was already smiling at the unnecessary formality, but Garrus waved it down and said, "No honorifics amongst family, Naxus."

"Just can't escape those saluting generals," Shepard murmured, just low enough for him to hear. He scowled at her. She grinned, flinging an arm around his waist for a brief squeeze.

"Do you want to hold him?" Solana asked. It was not a question. Garrus had been the recipient of  _many_ orders in his day; Naxus might still follow chain of command, but Garrus was under no misapprehension about who was calling the shots on this particular campaign. And Solana sure as hell wasn't throwing salutes his way.

"I, uh--wouldn't want to, uh--Shepard's been talking about it non-stop. Better give him to her, first."

He didn't miss Shepard's horrified (terrified?) glance. Ha. Scoped and dropped. "I couldn't possibly," she replied, glaring. "Garrus should definitely have the honor."

Solana's mandibles drooped. And then her eyes filled with furious fire. "Garrus Vakarian, you pick up your nephew and you  _cuddle him_ this  _instant_. Or I'm telling Dad."

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

Garrus approached the baby tank with all the trepidation of a soldier approaching a bomb with ten seconds left on the clock. The tiny turian within gurgled and waved his even tinier hands, little tiny mandibles flicking open and closed.

"Oh," Shepard cooed--Shepard. Cooed.  _Shepard. Cooed._ \--coming up beside him. "He's so tiny and perfect. And tiny. And _perfect._ "

"And breakable," Garrus added morosely. Oh, Spirits, when he put his hands into the baby Mako/Hammerhead/baby-specced combat vehicle, they were _enormous._ How the hell did his hands get so  _big?_  He paused, stalled halfway. The baby's little fingers reached for him. "I'm going to break my sister's baby and she's never going to forgive me."

"You're not going to break your sister's baby," Shepard chided. With a definite cooing edge. Whoa. Were her eyes always that big? And whatever the expression her face had contorted into--pain? pleasure? intense desire to push him out of the way and grab the baby herself?--he'd certainly never seen its like. Hadn't she just been as terrified as he?

"You are not going to break my baby," Solana echoed, half certainty and half warning. "But if you don't pick him up in about three seconds, I might think about breaking you."


	47. Kill Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard/Garrus, ME3 ALTERNATE UNIVERSE OH GOD THE MOST ALTERNATE OF ALTERNATE UNIVERSES  
> (Verb meme: Kill Me, one character kills another.)

It had been foolish, of course, to assume she was somehow immune.

And yet that’s precisely what he’d done. They’d done.

She comes to him with death in her eyes and a gun in her hand. A hand that’s shaking. Eyes that burn with unshed tears.

“I’m compromised,” she says. Her voice doesn’t waver.

“No,” he replies, the single word flung up between them like a shield. It’s not enough. Too flimsy. The certainty in her expression cuts right through it.

“I thought I was tired. Run down. A few bad decisions. Nightmares. Voices. Same shit, different day.” She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, holds it. When she looks at him again, her resolve is unmistakable. Her hand has stopped shaking. Her knuckles whiten on the pistol’s grip. She releases the breath. “I was just going to do it. I wasn’t going to tell you.”

Part of him wishes she hadn’t. Mostly he pleads for an intercession he knows will not come.

A ghost of a smile pulls at one corner of her mouth, so sad he can’t bear to look at it. “Then I realized you wouldn’t believe it if you didn’t hear it from me. And… and it wouldn’t have been fair.”

“Nothing about this is fair,” he replies, not bothering to hide the low note of keening grief. She winces. Such a little pain, compared to everything else, yet he’d give anything to take it back.

With businesslike briskness, she adds, “EDI knows. We’ve discussed what will happen when—EDI knows. The ship is yours, Garrus. The—the fight is yours. I—I know you—” She is forced to stop, sucking in a breath that sounds more like a sob. “You can do this. I know you can.”

He cups her face gently, cradling her head as though it’s delicate as glass. He bends to press his mouth to hers, his brow to hers. Her free arm loops around his waist, familiar and final. They do not speak. There is nothing to say. Her lips against his mouth, mandible, cheek are so warm, so soft. He can’t stop thinking about the gun in her hands. About Saren, in the end. About peace.

If anyone in the galaxy deserves a little peace, it’s her.

He is is a top-ranked hand-to-hand specialist. It takes hardly any effort at all to snap her neck. She doesn’t cry out. She only releases the last gasp of her breath and sags against him, suddenly limp. His brow still pressed to hers, he holds her until she is no longer warm in his arms and he’s certain her nightmares, at last, are over.


	48. Mordin and Garrus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, late ME2

“Ah,” Mordin said without looking up. “Good you’re here. Needed to speak with you.”

Garrus cleared his throat, linking his hands loosely behind his back because what he really wanted to do was turn around and walk straight back out of the lab and down to the battery. And then hide. For approximately the hundred years necessary to muffle his mortification. It was bad enough he had to talk to someone at all. Having Mordin _waiting_ for the conversation somehow made the whole thing infinitely worse.

He’d thought about going to Dr. Chakwas instead, but when he’d poked his head into the medbay, she’d assumed it was something to do with his face, and had launched into a series of questions that couldn’t have been further from the topic of his… research. When, at the end of the interrogation, she’d smiled and said, “Was there anything else, Garrus?” he’d only ducked his head and all but jogged out.

“Needed to speak with me?”

“Yes. Good news. Heard from STG connection. Helos Medical Institute willing to review your mother’s case, investigate possible clinical trial. Fees waived, of course.” Mordin finally lifted his head, bobbing his chin slightly, looking entirely pleased with himself. “Can be very convincing.”

“Oh,” Garrus said, rocking back. “That’s—that is good to hear. Didn’t think there’d be anything so soon. Thanks.”

Garrus had spent enough time around the salarian to recognize the tilt of his head and shift of his stance as confusion. The large eyes blinked twice. “Surprised,” Mordin said. “Curious. Different reason for visit, then. Ah.”

“Ah,” Garrus echoed. “Yeah. It’s—actually, it’s probably nothing. I should, uh, go. Get back to work. Plenty to do.”

As accustomed as he’d grown to alien facial expressions over the years, Mordin’s smile was something uniquely terrifying. “Should have anticipated,” Mordin said. “Spoke with Shepard earlier. Concerns entirely understandable.”

“She has concerns?” Garrus said, _blurted_ really, before he could think better of the words—or his tone—and swallow them. 

Mordin’s smile widened into an even more unnerving grin. “No, no, Shepard quite… resolute. Speak of general considerations only. Comfortable positions, chafing. Preparation.”

Maybe five hundred years of hiding would be enough. A thousand. “S-spirits, Mordin, that’s not why I’m here. I—crap, no. That’s what the damned extranet is for. If I… needed it.”

Mordin’s smile never shifted, but Garrus had the sudden sinking feeling the salarian bastard was messing with him. Something about the eyes, the pattern of his blinks. Sensat had looked the same, sometimes, just before he pulled some insidious prank. Monteague had always fallen for them. Even the repeats. Always good for a laugh. No one ever expected former-STG to have a sense of hum—

The memory, so unanticipated, caught him off-guard, and his breath hitched in a suddenly-tight throat while blood pounded in his head, the roar temporarily drowning out the quiet noises of the _Normandy_. 

“Ah,” Mordin said, more gently, all hint of the teasing gone. “I see. Emotional involvement. More complicated than simple stress relief.”

Garrus didn’t quite cringe, but he couldn’t hide the flustered flick of his mandibles, and he knew Mordin had to recognize it. “It’s a hell of a lot more than she signed up for, I can tell you that much.”

“Might be surprised. Have noted compatibility on multiple occasions.” Mordin gestured at Garrus, taking him in with a flick of fingers. “More than physical. Would not… worry. Counter to stated aim, after all.”

Garrus chuckled. “That’s one way of looking at it. I’m not sure stress relief’s ever been quite this stressful.”

Mordin rubbed at his chin thoughtfully, nodding. “Advice? Moment of calm, of quiet. Moment of peace. Worth a great deal, I think. Especially for her. Also, alcohol excellent option. Music. Would suggest dancing, but…”

“But it’s Shepard,” Garrus supplied with a laugh, feeling better about the whole thing than he had since he’d let fall the words _Shepard, you’re about the only friend I’ve got left in this screwed up galaxy_ and realized he meant it. “Don’t want to risk injury before a critical mission, after all.”

“Indeed,” Mordin agreed. “Now, _do_ have work.” Again the sly pattern of blinks, again the knowing smile. “Have forwarded helpful pamphlets. Suggest rigorous course of study. Wouldn't want to... disappoint."

If he'd had five fingers, he might've resorted to the middle-finger-up gesture Jack was so fond of. Instead, he only shook his head and headed for the door.

Besides, a little reading never hurt anyone.


	49. Garrus & Kasumi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, late ME2

“No,” said a voice not to the left or right, but directly _above_ him.

Garrus jumped half a foot and only barely stopped himself from making an embarrassingly startled noise. Kasumi’s cloak flickered and fell, and she leapt elegantly down from the ceiling as if the maintenance duct she’d been using was a Presidium path and she out for a pleasant stroll. The elevator he’d been waiting for opened, but before Garrus could step inside, Kasumi frowned, crossed her arms over her chest, and repeated even more intractably, “ _No._ Absolutely not.”

He sighed, and the door slid shut again. “You going to clarify, Kasumi? I have… uh, an appointment.”

Kasumi’s grin flashed white, which he saw only briefly as she darted forward, wrapping her fingers around his wrist and tugging him back toward the main battery. Her grip was surprisingly strong. “Sure,” she said. “An appointment. And I’m the Empress of Japan.” She threw a frown over her shoulder, shaking her head. “You turians.”

“We… turians?”

“Do you think she’s up there waiting for you kitted out head to heel in a hardsuit?” Garrus didn’t require turian subvocals or even human facial cues to recognize the deep vein of exasperation in Kasumi’s voice. “The _armor_ , Garrus. Always with the armor. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it has a giant _hole_ in it. Take it from me. Anything with visible reminders of near-death experiences is not at _all_ appropriate date attire.”

Luckily they were already at the battery by the time she finished speaking, so he didn’t think they’d had the audience he and Shepard had been trying so hard to avoid. Once they were inside, Kasumi dropped his wrist and planted her fists on her hips, turning in a slow circle. “Tell me you have _something_ else to wear.”

His mandibles flicked, anxious instead of irritated. None of his research had turned up specific requirements regarding clothing; perhaps it was a human custom he’d somehow missed. He shifted from one foot to the other, rubbing a hand along the side of his neck. Shepard was _used_ to him in armor, wasn’t she? She’d never seemed to notice what he was wearing befo—

“Aha!” While he’d been distracted, Kasumi had rummaged through his footlocker, and now held a fistful of fabric triumphantly over her head. Hell, he’d forgotten it was in there. Civilian gear was meant for civilians, and it had been a long time since he’d felt like one of those. Still, she seemed so pleased he couldn’t help but reach out and retrieve it. The tunic was stiff from never having been worn.

“You going to watch?” he muttered.

She clasped her hands at her chest and rose on her toes. “Ooh, can I?” He had a feeling that within the shadows of her hood, she was doing something very wiggly and human with her eyebrows.

He grimaced.

“Oh, fine. Promise me you’ll change before you go up there and I’ll leave you be.” She patted him lightly on the arm and then sauntered toward the door. “The wine’s a nice touch. She probably won’t drink any this close to a mission, but the thought’s a good one. She’ll appreciate that.” Kasumi’s lips tilted up in a smile equal parts amused and knowing. “Next time bring flowers. Not roses. She doesn’t like them. Peonies, if you can find them. Or camellias.”

“How do you know—I shouldn’t ask, should I?”

“Oh, you can ask.” She laughed, and stepped close enough to it for the door to obediently open. “Chances of me _telling_ , though, are slim to none.” Pausing in the doorway, she tilted her head up, so he could just barely make out the shine of her eyes in the shadows cast by her hood. “Be yourself, Garrus. That’s who she likes. Everything else is icing.”

“Icing?”

“On the cake.” She shook her head, bemused. “Look it up later. She likes that, too. Lemon. Not chocolate.”

The door closed on her smirk.

Halfway out of his armor, he paused, suspicious. Too easy. His visor wasn’t telling him anything, but then, he was pretty sure Kasumi had worked her way around _that_ tech ages ago. “Kasumi?” he said, voice echoing. “Are you in the ceiling?”

A moment later, a soft giggle betrayed her. “‘Course not,” she said brightly. “I’m behind the gun. Better sight lines.”


	50. Garrus & Jack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, late ME2

Since no one except Shepard ever visited him in the battery, Garrus was halfway through greeting her before he turned and found Jack leaning against the wall instead, arms crossed over her tattooed chest, narrowed eyes watching his every move. He blinked. If he’d had to make a list of likely visitors, Jack would’ve been near the bottom. Oh, they got along well enough, especially after Pragia, but she wasn’t big on talking. Or visiting. Occasionally they spoke in the mess—usually in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep and she could avoid the most unwanted contact—but she rarely emerged from her dark bolt-hole, and he knew better than to go looking for her when she didn’t want to be found.

“Expecting someone else?” she asked. “I bet. She’s busy. And I needed a minute.”

“Sounds ominous,” he replied easily, turning to face her, leaning back on his console and matching her posture.

Jack rolled her eyes. “Look, asshole. I don’t like many people, but I like her. And you’re okay. But I’ll fucking rip your fringe off with my bare hands if you hurt her.”

He knew she could do it, too. She’d have to catch him off-guard, and she’d have to use the full force of her biotics, but the fact that she had to crane her neck to glare up at him certainly didn’t make her threat an idle one. “That’s fine,” he said. “I’d let you.”

“Ugh. Sappy bullshit. You just needed to know. Okay?”

He nodded.

“Good. You need tips?”

“Do I need— _no._ ”

She smirked. Unlike when Shepard wore the expression, Jack’s smirk was terrifying. He wasn’t sure if he was glad of the console’s support, or worried it might be in the way if he needed to duck. “Sure? Because I’m a fucking fount of knowledge.” She waved a hand. “Turians, humans. Hell, I fucked a hanar once. I think.”

Turians hated the cold. Garrus, in that instant, felt like a chunk of Noveria was stuck somewhere in his midsection, trying desperately to exit through his throat. “How did you… know?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Jack grin without someone’s death immediately following, but she grinned at him now and, even more alarmingly, laughed. “Shit, Garrus. Even I got in on the betting pool.”

He closed his eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled _very_ slowly. “Betting pool?”

“No one knows who started it. My money’s on Kasumi. Probably rigged. She won. The salarian came fucking close. No idea how he knew about the wine. Or the—”

“I don’t want to know.”

“You sure? It all got pretty detailed in the end. Had to go to EDI to break a couple of ties. Did you really—”

“Shepard’s going to kill you. I might kill you.”

Jack pushed herself away from the wall. “Just fucking with you, Garrus. You know, unless you really do need those tips.”

“I do not.”

One smart-ass brow arched. “Does she? I mean, turians. Not everyone knows about the—”

“ _Jack_.”

She lifted her middle finger, but she smiled as she did it. “Fucking spoilsport.”

Sauntering toward the door, she turned. “Maybe I’ll just find a way to mention it, all conversational. ‘Cause damn. She deserves to know. Hell, so you you. Bet the professor’s pamphlets didn’t cover that part.”

He spat quite an inventive curse at her, but the door was already shut and only the Thanix cannon heard it.


	51. Shepard and Vega

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard POV, ME3

Unsurprisingly, when she strolled into the cargo hold looking for him, Shepard found Vega deep into a muscle-maintaining workout. Leaning back, she crossed her arms over her chest and watched a dozen pull-ups before clearing her throat. He immediately dropped to his feet lightly and turned, all in one motion.

 _Good_ , she thought, raising a speculative eyebrow. _Not good enough._

“Hey, Lola,” he said, smiling. “What’s with the hardsuit? We goin’ somewhere?”

She didn’t smile back. A faintly unnerved expression rattled his features for a moment, and his spine stiffened, military muscle-memory in action. _Very good. He can do better._

“No Lola-ing me today, Lieutenant. If I’m going to kick your ass six ways from Sunday, you’re damned-well going to acknowledge proper protocol as I do it.”

He snapped instantly to attention and saluted with the precision of a fresh-minted recruit trying too hard. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am!”

She shook her head, allowing a smile to break free. “Show-off,” she said. “Gear up. We’re playing hide-and-seek.”

“…Ma’am?”

She kept her chuckle to the privacy of her own mind, tipping her head sternly for Vega’s benefit. He didn’t flinch, though she didn’t miss the way his eyes darted over her shoulder, like he was expecting some kind of prank reveal. Truthfully, her scowl was only half-feigned. As he began sealing himself into his armor, she said, “The tattoo was the last straw, James. You have any idea what circles of hell I traversed to earn this?” She reached up, knocking a knuckle against the white and red N7 insignia on her breast. “No. You don’t. ‘Cause half of it’s classified and the rest I don’t talk about. But I’ll tell you this much: there’s a goddamned good reason N7s, and _only_ N7s, get to wear their designation. You want to earn the right to that ink? Training starts now.”

“With… hide-and-seek?”

“Brute force has its time and its place,” she said, tossing him a modded weapon as soon as he hit the last of his seals. “Like when you have to box a smartass Lieutenant into line, or punch a yahg, or headbutt a krogan.”

“Now you’re shitting me, Lola. Uh. Ma’am.”

She tapped her forehead lightly. “I’m really not. It’s a fine art, krogan headbutting. I suggest you learn it from a tough old battlemaster who won’t pull his punches, but who’s also invested in your brain matter actually staying firmly within your skull. Much less chance of death, that way.”

Vega’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t question her again. She grinned. “Good. You’re learning. You’re big and your tough and you’re strong, James. That might get you through N1. But you lack finesse. No more kicking electronics. No more pretending you’re not as smart as I know you are. You want to earn this, you’re going to dance my way. ”

He didn’t make the joke about her lack of dancing skills Garrus would’ve cracked in his place. Instead, his attention dropped to the weapon; she watched him check it carefully, running his hands over the body, double-checking the mods. _Excellent._ “Concussive only?” he asked.

“Right,” she said. “There’s a reason I cleared the hold. You’ve got ten seconds before I start shooting. You get one hit on me, and training’s over for the day.”

His grin flashed white. “Sure you don’t want to make it five, ma’am?”

“I’m going to headshot you first, just to prove I can,” she replied. “Baby steps, LT. Six seconds.”

“You’re not going to use your—” He didn’t finish. She’d already vanished into the cloak.

“Come on, James,” she taunted. “This isn’t basic. You have an advantage, you take it. That’s the rule that’ll save your ass.”

Two hours of cat and mouse, guerrilla-style, no-holds-barred chaos ensued. Shepard did ping him with a headshot first. Followed by at least half-a-dozen concussive rounds to the damned tattoo that had started the irritated itch under her skin to begin with. She had to admit she felt better afterward. Vega, to his credit, learned as quickly as she suspected he would once he was forced to drop his big bruiser act, and took his lumps in stride.

The advantage he finally took was one of size. He caught her slightly off-guard, just as her cloak went down, barreling into her with roughly the force of a tank, and shoving the muzzle of his shotgun up under her chin. She laughed, holding her hands up. “Fine, fine. You know that was mutually assured destruction, right? In a real fight I’d’ve taken my chances with a close-range Incinerate.” Smirking, she added, “Still want to go to five?”

“Hell, no. I suddenly feel a lot sorrier for the assholes who get in your way.”

“ICT in action, James.”

Panting, sweating, and looking as utterly content as she’d ever seen him, James removed his helmet and sank down to the ground, not even bothering to find himself a crate first. “Damn, Lola.”

“Yeah,” she said, pushing herself to her feet and rifling through the duffel she’d brought down. She’d never have admitted it, but her legs actually ached with fatigue. Her hair was plastered to her head, damp bangs hanging in her eyes; her hand trembled as she pushed the offending strands out of her way. Garrus would’ve had something to say about that, too, the bastard. Vega didn’t appear to notice. 

A moment later, she found what she was looking for, and tossed Vega one of the cold bottles she’d brought down. Plunking herself next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder, she bumped against his side companionably. “Hell of a workout, James. I’m giving you at least N level zero point five for that effort.” She clinked the lip of her bottle to the body of his, took a long pull, and sighed. “Best part of grown-up hide-and-seek is the beer after.”

“I dunno, ma’am. The company’s okay, too.”

She snorted. “Fine, James. N level zero point six for appropriate use of sucking up to the commanding officer.”

“We doing this again tomorrow, ma’am?”

“Unless we’re up to our eyeballs in Reapers, you’re on.” She mock-glowered. “Now shut up and let Lola enjoy her goddamned beer.”


	52. Shepard, Garrus & Tiny Turian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, ME3

“I don’t suppose you have any idea who this little monster belongs to?”

Garrus, crouched beside the cot of a wounded turian soldier who was trying very hard to give him a report, glanced over his shoulder, lifting his brow plates. Faint query turned into genuine astonishment when he realized Shepard was toting a tiny turian on one hip. The child blinked at him with huge amber eyes that so reminded him of his missing sister his breath caught, frozen somewhere between loss and grief and desperate hope he’d see Solana again. 

Shepard hitched the child up, settling her more firmly on her hip. The little girl gave a pleased chirp and snuggled closer, one arm wrapped tight around Shepard’s neck while the other clutched at the fall of red hair. As Garrus watched, the child gave Shepard’s ponytail a tug and stuck the end in her mouth, mandibles flicking into a satisfied smile. Shepard made a pained face, but her eyes shone and she made no attempt to extricate her hair from the child’s ministrations.

“Where did you find her?” Garrus asked, patting the soldier lightly on the shoulder and rising to his feet. When he extended his arms, the little turian ignored him, hiding her face against Shepard’s shoulder. The damp spot on the dark blue fabric gave testimony that hair wasn’t the only thing the child had been chewing. Chuckling, Shepard cupped the back of the child’s head as tenderly as a turian mother might’ve. 

Garrus tilted his head, surprised a turian child would voluntarily stay with an alien when one of her own kind was present, but Shepard didn’t see his bewilderment; she was too busy making faces and cooing at her turian passenger. He wondered if she had any idea how rare it was, to be a stranger so instantly accepted by a youngling. With a fond smile, he shook his head. Of course she didn’t. And of course she was Shepard, so she just accepted the child’s trust and returned comfort in kind.

“This intrepid explorer was hiding under Vega’s poker table, getting creative with bootlaces.” Shepard sputtered a laugh as the turian’s tiny mandibles flicked against her neck, evidently finding a ticklish spot. “I think he wanted to keep her, honestly, but I figured someone would be missing her.” Shepard looked the child in the eyes and made a face. “Where’s your mama, sweet pea? I imagine there’s a nice, solid cowl you’d like to be nibbling on instead of all this weird human hair.”

The little girl sneezed, as if to prove the point, and then chittered another laugh, planting both hands on Shepard’s shoulder to give herself the leverage necessary to press her brow to Shepard’s cheekbone. A shadow passed over Shepard’s face, though, and Garrus rescued her before the dark thoughts—how many children were motherless now? Orphaned? Was this little girl one of them?—could take root and put out leaves. “Her name’s Kalia,” Garrus supplied. “Kalia Anaxis. And I am very sure her mother is wondering where she disappeared to.” He fixed Kalia with a mock-stern glare. “This is not the first time she’s taken herself off wandering.”

“Kalia!” the turian cried. “Kalia, Kalia!”

Relief made Shepard’s smile all the brighter. “You could’ve told me, you know. Kalia’s a much prettier name than _monster._ ”

“Kalia!” 

Shepard bent her own head, brushing her forehead against Kalia’s gently, and Garrus’ stomach did a strange and unanticipated flip, a dangerously hopeful thought blossoming in his belly. The middle of a war that could very well end everything probably wasn’t the best time to contemplate the possibility, but Garrus found himself wondering if Shepard might—one day, perhaps—be amenable to figuring out some approximation of family life. With him, if his luck held. The stray thought caught him so off-guard, he didn’t realize Shepard was already headed deeper into the turian camp until she called out from a dozen steps away. 

“You coming, Vakarian?”

“Right behind you,” he replied automatically, feet already moving. He cleared his throat, desperate to free his subvocals from the ambush of his emotions. “Just take a left at the obnoxious VI.”

“Funny,” she groused, glowering hard enough to make him chuckle. “So very funny.”

“Funny!” Kalia echoed, flinging an excited hand into the air and yanking out a hank of Shepard’s hair in the process. She waved the strands above her head, apparently fixated by their unusual movement, and giggled. “Funny, funny!”

“Yes,” Shepard said dryly. “Hilarious. You two should start an act.”

But Garrus didn’t miss the way she cuddled Kalia close, dropping a soft human kiss on the crown of her head, and he was glad he didn’t need to speak, because he felt certain even her human ears couldn’t have missed what his subharmonics would’ve revealed.

A conversation for later, maybe.

First, of course, they had a war to win.


	53. Pressed Between the Pages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moira Callahan's origin story; pre-game through pre-ME2. (Moira's a character in A Handful of Dust, so if you're not following that, you won't know her :))

“A face like yours’ll take you far,” Ma said, hand firmly gripping her chin so she couldn’t look away. It hurt. She didn’t dare complain. She just held her eyes open until they burned, jerking her head in a little nod to say she understood. “Just mind you keep your mouth shut. And your legs, for fuck’s sake. God knows you don’t want to end up like me.”

So Maddy Olsen brushed her honey hair— _natural_ , not dyed, not cosmetically altered—a hundred strokes every night and she never ate sweets for fear of ruining her figure and she watched. Silently. She was very good at watching, and very good at keeping quiet. Very good at remembering. While her ma cleaned big fancy houses, Maddy kept to corners, and studied her marks. She learned how the wealthy lived, how they walked, how they talked. She learned their secrets, tucking them into her memory like beautiful, deadly flowers pressed between the pages of a book only she knew about. She practiced their dismissive blindness, practiced their gestures, practiced the way they lifted their noses and sniffed when they caught sight of her. 

At home, in front of the cracked mirror stolen from an old makeup compact, she recreated those expressions, pinching herself hard when she failed. And if her thighs were perpetually marked with little black bruises, her education continued briskly. Soon she moved from gestures to inflections. Rich people didn’t sound like her, didn’t sound like Ma, didn’t sound like any of her friends. Maddy decided she liked old Mrs. Winston’s accent best. The woman was a grade-A snob, but she never dropped her ‘g’s, and she used words like _darling_ and _lovely_ and _unsightly_. Usually the latter was reserved for Maddy, but Maddy didn’t care. “Unsightly,” she told the mirror later, curling her lip in just the right way. “How wretched you are, Maddy Olsen. How common. How dare you reach beyond your station? How dare you?”

But she dared. She watched, and she studied, and she dared.

When Willy Kwan from down the street wanted to kiss her, she said, “No, darling, absolutely not,” in Mrs. Winston’s voice. He didn’t listen. He grabbed her arm with one hand and reached for the hem of her skirt with the other, so she kicked him in the balls as hard as she could and ran home. She heard he ended up in the hospital. Said it was a fight with another boy. Maddy smiled a slow, cruel smile she’d stolen from another of her mother’s clients, a particularly condescending bitch called Moira Blythe-Keswick. Willy Kwan didn’t bother her again after that. No one did.

#

Vincent Callahan was vile—the gods of genetics had been less than kind, and everyone she’d asked said he was handsy and entitled as shit at the best of times—but he was richer than God and had even better connections, since no one ever claimed the Callahans played fair. They had their fingers firmly poked in so many pies it made Maddy’s stomach twist with longing just imagining it. 

Maddy met him at a fundraiser for some charity whose name she couldn’t remember. Something to do with sick babies or space exploration or this season’s favorite politician. She lost track. Her dress brought out the gleam of her hair and highlighted the gold flecks in her hazel eyes; she knew it looked good. Great, even. It hugged every perfectly-maintained curve and glowed in the candlelight. It had also cost six months’ wages, and she fully intended to return it the next morning.

Until, of course, ham-handed Vincent Callahan spilled half a glass of wine all down the front of her golden silk gown. She pretended not to notice that he copped a feel as he dabbed ineffectually at the swiftly-spreading stain.

“So sorry,” he said, patting, patting. “Vincent Callahan. Vince. I don’t believe we’ve met?”

“Mad—” She paused, cleared her throat, stepped fully into the role. “Forgive me. _Moira_. Moira Winston.”

“Not the Winstons who summer on the islands?”

“The very same,” she lied, as he gave her right breast a final generous dab. “How unusual our paths haven’t crossed before.” She lowered her eyelashes, peering up at him to gauge his interest. His pupils were dilated, and beads of sweat sprang up near an already-receding hairline. Her ghost of a longing sigh brought him closer. The flutter of her eyelashes and the promise of modesty in the tilt of her head hooked him, and she smiled.

The dress was ruined, of course, but as six months’ wages went, it turned out to be a good investment. Apologies led to a dinner date, and the dinner date led to matrimony. It wasn’t even hard. Maddy—Moira, _Moira_ —was only surprised some other enterprising, pretty young thing hadn’t beaten her to the punch.

Their loss. Her gain. 

One hardly even noticed Vincent’s tremendously overactive sweat glands after a time. 

#

The Shepard girl was something of a mistake, but Moira was determined to make some profit of it. The right society marriage, perhaps. Favors. Some return on her investment. The girl was biddable enough, and a good listener, though she never seemed to have the slightest idea what to do with all the secrets she heard, all the powerful, poisonous flowers she collected.

On her most paranoid days, Moira half-suspected the girl was trying to beat her at her own game, the way she wielded those big eyes and the tremulous, heartbroken smile that turned men to useless mush who’d fall over themselves to do her bidding. Except… except she never _did_ anything with the power. She never _bid_ anyone do _anything._ She just ducked her head and nodded obediently and cried for her dead family when she thought no one was listening, even though a pair of Mindoirian hicks couldn’t have given her a fraction of what Moira could offer. Was offering. 

Moira couldn’t stomach the waste. If she’d had _half_ the girl’s natural charisma, just a _shade_ of that delicate porcelain-doll beauty, she’d have been unstoppable. She certainly wouldn’t have had to settle for a repulsive wretch like Vincent Callahan.

“A face like that will get you far,” Moira told the Shepard girl once, only to be met with a blank, cow-stupid nod. Hopeless, really. Moira didn’t bother mentioning keeping her mouth shut. Or her legs. She certainly didn’t want to echo her own mother’s backwater crudeness, and the girl rarely spoke as it was. Lord only knew what a bastard would have to do to pry those thighs apart.

Her husband, of course, did give it the old college try.

After the third time Moira caught Vincent cornering his new ‘daughter’—always standing too close, always offering a comforting embrace, always sweating—she dragged him off for a private chat of their own, smiling the sharpest of her knife smiles and twisting the soft skin of his upper arm between pinching fingers. He yelped. She didn’t let up.

“No,” Moira said. “I don’t care what you do with the help, or with Cassidy Carson, or with Nicholas’ barely-legal little friends, but she is off limits. If you touch her—if I so much as find out you’ve been alone in the same room with her again—I will cut off your cock and feed it to you fried in onions and butter. Are we understood?”

He didn’t answer, glowering up at her like a child whose mother had just taken away his favorite toy. She twisted his moist flesh harder. “I didn’t do anything,” he finally choked out, an octave higher than usual.

“I know,” Moira said. “But she has the hunted look that says you’ve tried. She is not for you. This is not negotiable.”

He slept with one of her socialite ‘friends’ in retaliation, but Moira didn’t much care, tucking that indiscretion into her book of secrets along with all the others. One never knew what a little information might buy, and Elaine’s husband was the jealous type.

#

Not many people spoke with the Illusive Man in person. Even fewer remembered what his eyes had looked like before they’d taken on the cybernetic blue glow. Almost no one knew the name he’d worn before the First Contact War. Moira Callahan was one of that rarefied circle, though she was careful never to demand too much of him. People had died for less. Rather frequently.

Still, her lip curled as he lifted his cigarette, inhaling deeply, blowing out a cloud of smoke without bothering to turn his head.

“Disgusting habit.”

He tapped the ashes loose, not quite putting the abhorrent thing out, but not smoking it directly into her face, either. An apt sort of metaphor for their relationship, all things told. She extended a hand and one of his tall, lean, interchangeable women immediately approached bearing a dirty gin martini, three olives, glass perfectly chilled. 

“Something you wanted, Mrs. Callahan?” It took some effort, but she didn’t allow her expression to shift. He more than anyone knew how much she despised being relegated to the position of dutiful but ultimately powerless socialite housewife. The role was, of course, a necessary subterfuge, a natural offshoot of her long-dead ma’s adjuration to use her pretty face and keep her mouth shut. The tip of the cigarette glowed in the dimness. “I am a very busy man. As you see.”

She sipped the martini. Like everything else—his suit, his women, his comfortable chairs—the drink’s inevitable perfection grated. “Indeed. And yet imagine how much busier you’ll be if I withdraw my contributions.”

He lifted an elegant eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware we were playing the game of idle threats. Shall I have your son killed, then? You’ve been generous over the years; I could see he’s awarded some posthumous piece of metal for honor or bravery or the like.”

She swatted this away idly, as if his words were the irritation of a buzzing fly and not the sum of all her worst nightmares since Nicholas took it into his fool head to follow the Shepard girl into Alliance-flavored idiocy. “You assured me I would have access.”

“I agreed to regular reports. Not interruptions or temper tantrums or incessant demands.”

“Then you and I have very differing opinions on the meaning of the word _regular_. I’ve heard nothing for months.”

“There’s little to tell. Project Lazarus proceeds apace. In large part thanks to certain generous donations.”

Moira drained her martini and rose, lifting her chin. “You’re mistaken. This is not the game of idle threats. It’s mutually assured destruction, and I daresay I’d have an easier time crawling out of the ashes. You’ve built such a palace around you. You have so much further to fall, so much more to lose.”

“If it helps you sleep at night, Maddy Olsen.” His smile was as icy as her own. “I’d rather no one pressed the red button.”

“Then adjust your definition of regular. Or I’ll adjust my definition of _billions_. Philanthropically-speaking.”

The Illusive Man leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other, saluting her with his glass of bourbon. “You’ll never win her over.”

Moira laughed. “And you think you have a better chance?” She stepped close enough to pluck the cigarette from his fingers, lifting it to her own lips and drawing the sweet, sharp smoke into her lungs. It tasted like her childhood; like the smell of her mother’s hair; like the illicit packs she used to smoke with Willy Kwan out behind the school; like the first time she met the charming man sitting before her now just before he shipped out to Shanxi, just before Vincent Callahan spilled wine on her golden gown and her life changed forever. “You play your game, Jack, and I’ll play mine. We’ll see who holds the better cards in the end.”

Dropping the cigarette to his floor, she ground the butt beneath her delicate heel and strode out without once looking back, smiling the slow, cruel smile that had long-since become entirely her own.


	54. Helmets are Good

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, ME3

“That’s it, Shepard. I think we’re all clear.”

Garrus reached down, pocketing a couple of the heat sinks the half-husk, fully-dead Cerberus soldiers weren’t going to need any more. The wind howled, a last mech self-destructed with a bang, and “Die for the Cause” finished on its stirring crescendo, but Shepard didn’t answer. He switched to the private frequency they sometimes used. “Shepard, you okay?”

Nothing. Not even static. Not even a buzz. Not even the sound of battle that might’ve told him that, clear or not outside, she was still dealing with hostiles and could use backup.

The planet’s surface temp was too warm to account for the sudden chill that turned his blood to ice, and he turned, scanning for her. She’d gone inside the building under cover of her cloak to collect the intel Hackett wanted, leaving him and Vega to cover her six outside. No one had entered after her; he was sure of that much. “Vega?” he snapped over the comms; across the platform, Vega’s head shot up. “You have eyes on Shepard?”

“Not since she went in. Thought she must’ve come out your side.” Vega cleared his throat. “Hey, Lola. Very funny. That’s enough hide and seek for today.”

But Garrus hardly heard him; he was already running, already cursing himself for not following sooner. He said, “Get Cortez down here  _now._ ”

The silence as Vega clicked over to the Kodiak’s frequency was doubly loud because under usual circumstances, Shepard would be in his ear, giving him shit for missing an easy shot, or complimenting him on a particularly good one, or comparing their headshot totals. His heartbeat was too loud; blood pounded in his ears where her voice should have been.

As soon as he entered the building, he caught her vitals on his visor, present but erratic, and he picked up his pace. Skidding around a corner, he found her at the center of what had obviously been a small explosion. An Atlas mech, if the various bits and pieces were any indication. Shepard looked as through she’d been thrown by the blast, and lay sprawled, limp and boneless, her face a mess of blood.

The sound that emerged choked and broken from his throat was meant to be her name, but bore no actual resemblance to a complete word. He dropped to her side and, without jostling her, ran light fingers over her face, searching for the wound. A deep laceration cutting across her brow seemed to be the primary culprit, but there was so much blood. Her hair was matted with it, darkening the red at her temples.

Her groan a moment later was, perhaps, the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. Her eyes fluttered open, and he was relieved when they immediately tracked to him. Her lips twitched into a bloodied smile. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or keen, and settled instead for touching her cheek with the tips of his talons as tenderly as he knew how.

“Atlas,” she said, leaning into his touch.

“Figured that,” he said, glad he could actually form words, but not at all in control of what his subharmonics were saying.

Her brow furrowed, and she winced. “Hey,” she said, “it’s okay.”

“You’re covered in blood, Shepard. Okay is not the word.”

Confusion ghosted across her features, and she reached up to dab at her face. “Head wound,” she said. “Hit my forehead on the console when the mech blew. Bleeds like hell, but isn’t actually that bad.”

“I think I’ll let Dr. Chakwas be the judge of that.”

She started to push herself upright, but Garrus got there first, easing an arm behind her and cradling the back of her neck with his other hand. Pressing a palm to the still-bleeding wound on her head, she settled the side of her face against his chest. “I’ll give you this much at least, Vakarian,” she said, and though there was pain in her voice, he also heard amusement, and a little of the chill in his veins began to thaw. “You may have a point about the benefits of wearing a helmet.”

 


	55. Proposal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard POV, vaguely AU, post-game

“We’re going to be late.”

“You  _always_  say that, and we never are.” She smirked into the mirror, letting him catch her reflected amusement, and then returned to the very serious business of expert mascara application. “Besides, I seriously doubt they’ll give away our table. Having a couple of the most recognizable surnames in the galaxy’s got to count for something.”

Garrus’ sigh was so long-suffering, Shepard relented. “Thirty seconds,” she said, rising on her toes to plant a lipstick-rosy kiss on his mandible. “I’m not wearing a towel out to dinner.”

“More’s the pity,” Garrus said in the voice that made her give serious thought to forgoing dinner altogether in favor of entertainment that involved far less fabric of any kind. The way he dragged a blunted talon along her bare clavicle reinforced the desire to blow the whole thing off, but he’d been looking forward to it for weeks, and she’d promised not to go falling through any floors if she could help it. He stepped backward, tilting his head in a gesture somehow both cocksure and fond, like he knew exactly what she was thinking. Probably did, the bastard. “Twenty-five.”

Shepard ducked into the closet, closing the door and rifling through the hangers until she found the garment bag she was looking for. Even the swish of the zipper sounded expensive, and she smiled. Some things were worth the credits, no matter the extravagance. Like fish tank VIs. And dresses without bizarre cutouts in random locations. It took a little contorting to get herself into it, but flexibility had its uses, and when she ran her hands down the length of silk, she was doubly glad she’d carved out the time necessary for shopping.

Any doubts she’d had about the outfit were erased the moment she stepped out the closet and Garrus, no doubt about to hurry her along, stopped, stumbled mid-stride, and gaped, mandibles flaring. She grinned, striking a pose, all jutted hip and slim arms and lifted chin. His eyes dropped to the neckline that left her décolletage bare, and then further, to the exaggerated curve of waist and hip.

There was, after all, more than one way to highlight a waist. It didn’t have to be all bared skin and tight straps. Shepard’s dress made the most of some hidden boning and very excellent underwear. The flowing chiffon skirt in variegated layers of dark blue and silver shimmered around her when she stepped forward, revealing a high, hidden slit up one side. Garrus’ eyes dropped to her bare leg. Blinked. Opened his mouth to speak. Failed.

“What?” she said, waving at his silver and navy suit, tailored and trim and doing  _very_  nice things to  _his_  waist. “You got new clothes. I thought we should match.” She stepped close enough to lift that bare leg in an echo of a tango move, hooking it over his hip. “And this dress is better for dancing. You’re not the only one who can manage lessons on the side, Vakarian.”

“Right,” he said, the earlier suaveness choked out of him. “Sure you don’t want to, uh, skip all the stuff in the middle?”

“You had your chance,” she reminded him, tugging him as close as the barrier of their clothing would allow. “We’re going to be late.”

#

Garrus was quiet during dinner. Unnervingly. Shepard found herself pushing her very delicious food around her plate while her stomach turned itself into anxious knots, waiting for him to say whatever it was he obviously wanted to say. Finally, just as the tension shifted toward unbearable and she opened her mouth to ask what the matter was, he fumbled in a pocket and produced a small box, sliding it across the snowy tablecloth toward her.

A  _jewelry_  box. It opened with a very expensive sound of its own.  _Didn’t buy this on a vigilante’s salary._ The ring within was delicate whorls of filigreed gold surrounding the deepest, bluest star sapphire she’d ever seen, ringed with tiny diamonds. Her breath caught, and she  _ached_  to slide it onto her finger, but didn’t trust herself not to fumble it.

“Oh,” she said. Stupidly. Her hands trembled, and she added a tittering little laugh. Put her in a room with a bomb about to blow, and her fingers never faltered, but put a box with a ring in it into her hands and suddenly she was all nerves. “You… you trying to make an honest woman of me, Garrus?”

“The vids—Joker—I—” He stopped. Inhaled. When he spoke, his subharmonics hardly wavered at all. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Shepard. That’s what it means.”

“Well,” she said, holding out a hand and gesturing for him to do the honors. His hands, she was relieved to see, shook a little too. The ring fit perfectly. Of course. Garrus always did have an eye for details. “In that case, what a coincidence.”


	56. Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW, post-game(ish), Garrus POV.  
> Written for prompts:  
> 4\. Oddest place they’d have sex?  
> 13\. Who’s loud? Who’s quiet? Does one try to make the other louder/quieter? How?

 Shepard was evil.

And by _evil_ , Garrus meant she was capable of doing things that left him a gibbering, addle-brained mess of sensation, trembling in every limb, on fire in every nerve, and desperately swallowing a low keen threatening at every moment to become a full-voiced howl.

She liked it.

A lot.

Which meant she took every opportunity to exercise her evil power.

Shepard was currently employed in being very, _very_ evil. Ambush in his office with obnoxiously thin walls evil. Half an hour before a meeting he was entirely unprepared for evil. Sauntering in with _that look_ on her face—the  _let’s pretend we’ve never met before_ or  _let’s pretend_ _you’re still a C-Sec cop and I’m a naughty suspect_ or  _let’s pretend we don’t have galactic responsibilities and we’re just two idiots in love_ look—evil, and all thoughts of logistics and treaties and who wanted what from whom (preferably _yesterday_ ) promptly went out of his head.

He started to speak, but she just shook her head and raised a quelling finger to her lips. With a wink, she activated her tactical cloak, and he realized a combination of Spectre status and guile and Shepard cunning had brought her to his office entirely undetected.

Damn.

Someone was going to have to take another look at the current state of security. If Shepard could break in, others could—

"Shh," she whispered, still cloaked, her breath a ghost of a caress across the plates of his cheek. He shuddered, involuntarily turning toward her, only to find even her cloaked shimmer gone. On the other side of him, she said, "I’ll debrief your security team later. They’re in _so_ much trouble.”

Her invisible hand ran up the length of his arm, fingers tracing feather-light patterns. Her touch lingered at his neck, teasing a muffled groan from him as she lavished attention on the hide left bare, following fingertips with lips, and lips with the flat of her tongue.

Just when he thought he couldn’t take another moment of it, she knelt between his knees, letting her cloak drop, letting him see the flush of her cheeks and the shine in her eyes. Never taking her eyes from his, she skimmed those devilish fingers down his sides, letting them linger for just a moment—a moment too long, a moment not long enough—on the sensitive curve of his waist, just above the jut of his hips. His pants quite abruptly grew too tight.

Shepard smiled, pink tip of her tongue darting out to moisten her full lips. Like a threat. Like a promise.

Evil.

So evil.

Not that the galaxy would ever believe him if he told.

Her fingers kept working. His hips shifted to oblige her. And softly, so softly, she laughed, the puff of her breath against him bringing him fully alert. In more ways than one.

Her devious objective achieved, she tugged his trousers fully down, abandoning them somewhere around his knees. He didn’t even think about protesting, office or no office. His chair was exceedingly comfortable; he leaned back in it and tried not to moan.

Dragging her tongue up the length of him, she eased him between those lips (her incomparable lips, her perfect lips), cheeks hollowing as she made another kind of promise, a different kind of threat. He turned his startled groan into a cough; better if the occupants of adjacent offices thought he had some kind of turian plague than they suspect the savior of the galaxy was engaged in giving him a very, very, _very_ thorough (and evil, definitely evil) blow job.

As she took him in further still, Garrus whined low in his subharmonics because what he really wanted was to cry out as emphatically (and loudly, definitely loudly) as he would have done at home. Or anywhere they might not actually be overheard. Shepard hummed against him, too soft to hear but _definitely_ not too soft to feel. He dropped a hand to the top of her head, twining his fingers in her soft hair, stroking the curve of skull and cheek, guiding but not pressing, not demanding.

His door opened. For a panicked second, he didn’t understand the sound. Shepard evidently did; she vanished beneath her cloak again and pulled his chair flush with the desk, effectively hiding both herself and her activities. And his semi-clothed state.

It was a good thing his secretary wasn’t turian, because there was absolutely no disguising the lust and distress (and distressed lust) in his subharmonics when he said, “ _What_?”

And Shepard ( _so damned evil, so exceptionally evil)_ continued blithely doing _exactly_ what she’d been doing before they were so rudely and unexpectedly interrupted. Garrus coughed again. His secretary frowned.

"Are you all right, sir?"

"Def—" he coughed again, harder, but Shepard didn’t for a moment stop the slow bob of her head, the insidious pressure of tongue and lips and throat and mouth _because she was evil_ , “—Definitely.”

"It’s just, you’ve been coughing and coughing. Should I postpone the meeting, sir? Call a medic?"

He felt Shepard smile.

He coughed. Again. And was hard-pressed ( _oh, Spirits_ ) not to pant. “Yeah,” he said. “Uh. Meeting. Cancel. Cancel it. But not—oh—crap—no, don’t call a medic. I’ll, uh. Stop. Later. Oh.”

"Sir, are you absolutely—"

"That’s all!" he snapped. Desperately. "Um. Yeah. Just… I—if you could just make sure I’m not interr—interrupted. I, uh, really need, _really_ need to cough. A lot.”

Shepard laughed voicelessly against him. It took every ounce of willpower he had ever, _ever_ possessed to wait until the door closed behind his secretary before throwing his head back and sighing out his keening pleasure. Shepard grinned, leaning against him, her cheek pressed to his thigh as he trembled and shook with the aftershocks of what she’d done.

He glowered—not very convincingly, probably—down at her. “You’re—”

"Evil?" Shepard finished, running a fingertip over her lips to catch the last of him. "Yeah. But I’m also amazing. Because now _you_ have a day off work, and I am just _full_ of ideas how to spend it.”

"At home, I assume."

She sat back, lifting a shoulder in a lazy shrug and raising her hand in something someone _somewhere_ who wasn’t looking too hard might’ve called a salute. “Aye, sir. If you insist.” And then she leered. Evilly. “Although this is _such_ a wide desk. And _such_ a perfect height. And I’ve always wondered…”

Her eyelashes fluttered. He grimaced. And turned up his music. “Die for the Cause” blared through the overhead speakers.

No harm in being patriotic, after all. No one could fault him for that.

 


	57. Markings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An anon on tumblr prompted:
> 
> This is just me but I think it would be adorable if young Garrus and young Grace met. They're both kids and Garrus would be curious about the human with red hair and Grace curious about seeing a Turian her age. How would it be if they met at that age?
> 
> Garrus POV, probably AU, kids!

 

“Hi,” said a voice—a strange, flat voice, one without subharmonics—just to his left. His mandibles twitched with irritation. “Can you tell me how come grownup turians have that makeup on, but little turians don’t?”

Garrus recoiled a little from the question, and even more from the alien asking it. Instead of proper fringe or even plates, its head was covered in very long, fine red fur or tentacles or something. Its grey-green eyes weren’t big as a salarian’s, but they were still alarmingly wide, and more fur—black, this time—sprouted from around them. Red fuzzy bits lifted and the big eyes got even bigger. The fleshy mouth twisted around. Garrus shuddered.

“Don’t you have a translator?” it asked. “Mine has turian in it. I tested it. I heard some big turians talking already, but you’re the first little one I’ve seen.”

“I’m not that little,” Garrus retorted. Maybe its translator did have turian, but either it couldn’t pick up the overt _go away and leave me alone_ in his subharmonics, or the human chose to ignore it. “I’m seven. Almost eight. And I’m taller than you.”

The human stretched its mouth and showed all its teeth alarmingly. The teeth were all very blunt; he didn’t think they could do much damage at all. “I’m ten. I live on Mindoir, but my dad said I could come with him to the Citadel. I think it’s something to do with his parents dying. They live—lived, I guess—on Earth. Something about money. I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” Garrus said, annoyance temporarily set aside. “About your grandparents.”

It cocked its head, its shoulders and neck looking very breakable without a cowl to protect them. “I never met them. I think they were mad when Dad and Mom decided to be colonists. Do you live here? On the Citadel?”

“I live in Cipritine,” he said, with no small amount of pride. “That’s—”

“The capital of Palaven, right?” it interrupted. “Wow! It must be so amazing and big and full of things to do. I learned about it at school. We learned all kinds of things! Like, you’re a boy turian, right?” It waved at its own head and then at his. “Because you have the pointy fringe. But they didn’t tell me about the makeup. So, that’s why I asked. Sorry if it was rude. Was it? Your expressions are very different from mine.”

Garrus didn’t want to admit he didn’t know the first thing about the human homeworld, let alone its capital, and he still didn’t know if the human was male or female or something else altogether. He said, “It’s just… I’m kind of busy.”

Its face did a weird thing, all squishy and malleable—he didn’t think he could ever get used to looking at faces like that—and when it spoke its voice didn’t have subharmonics but he was still pretty sure it was sad. Or maybe disappointed. Or both. “Okay,” it said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bug you or anything.” Its shoulders moved up and down, and then it turned away. It stopped after a step and turned its head back to look at him. “It’s just… if you want that old datapad to work, you probably need to change the power converter. The 940s aren’t backwards compatible.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Garrus said, glowering down at his tools and the traitorous power converter. “I’ve been working on this for _days_.”

Its shoulders went up and down again. Before it could leave, Garrus said, “Wait. Sorry. I was the one being rude. Ah. Do you—you seem to know something about this stuff.”

Again the shoulders. This time, though, the mouth went up instead of down. “A bit. I like building things. And taking them apart.”

“Me too,” Garrus said, sort of glad the human didn’t seem to catch the echo of awe that leaked into his subharmonics. “My mom’s amazing at it, and I was trying to make this for her. She doesn’t really like being away from home, so I was going to put a bunch of pictures of Palaven on it.”

“Cool!” the human said. “My dad’s the one who does all the tech stuff in my family. He lets me help.” It ducked its head a little bit. “He says I’m pretty good.”

He could have said that himself, after just watching it work for a few minutes. He thought his mom would like the human; it was respectful of tools and concentrated very hard on everything it did. Garrus thought all those extra fingers would make it harder, but it didn’t seem to suffer. The pink tip of its tongue stuck out of its mouth while it worked.

He said, “It’s not, um, makeup. By the way. They’re tattoos. Colony markings. Mostly. It’s sort of complicated. You get them when you’re older. Like, when you prove yourself. As part of the community.”

It lifted its head and nodded. Garrus was pretty sure showing its teeth like that was something happy and not aggressive, but it was still hard not to back away from the gesture. “My mom has a tattoo, but it’s on her back. It’s a bunch of roses. It covers up a big scar she got when she was younger. She didn’t tell me what from, though. She said maybe when I’m older. I think it makes her sad, whatever it is. The roses are pretty, though. That’s her name. Rose. My dad always sings her songs about roses and she has this nice perfume that smells like the best roses you’ve ever smelled.”

“You… talk a lot,” Garrus said, trying—and failing, mostly—to follow the wandering thread of non-sequiturs.

It blinked at him. “Do I? Mostly it’s just me, so I guess all this stays in my head. Do you have any brothers and sisters?”

He nodded. “A sister. Little one. She drives me crazy. She’s always taking my stuff and usually breaking it, and she wants to follow me _everywhere_ , and, um, she talks a lot, too. But not like you. She talks about baby stuff.”

“Lucky,” the human said softly. “Oh! Look, there’s my dad coming back for me. Just trade in that converter and I think it’ll work fine.” It dashed off a few steps, long red fringe flying, but then turned back again and thrust out its hand. “Grace Shepard. It was nice meeting you.”

He stared for a moment, then put his hand in the one offered. The human shook it up and down. Weird. “Garrus Vakarian,” he said. “Um. Nice to meet you, too.”


	58. Eating Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Going out to eat: Who pays? Who orders the most food? And who has dessert?
> 
> Shepard POV. Somewhere in ME3?

“Garrus. This is ridiculous. Even with the top-of-the-line tech and mods and extremely necessary fish tank VIs and model ships, the Alliance is sending an excessive amount of money my way. I can’t spend it all. Let me pay for dinner.”

“The vids—”

She sighed, the force of her exhaled breath blowing her bangs away from her face. “Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to believe everything you see on the vids?”

Garrus crossed his arms over his chest, glowering at her with such a strange mixture of distress and confusion and frustration she almost giggled. Which would have been entirely inappropriate. She turned it into a cough instead.

“I ate twice what you did,” he said.

“I had dessert and you didn’t.”

“You drank more of the wine.”

“So you won’t let me pay and you’re calling me a lush? I’m wounded, Garrus. _Wounded_.”

“Nice try. Not falling for it. Really, Shepard. Not your best.”

When the waiter swung by, Shepard reached out, practically flinging her credit chit at him before Garrus could get his in. Her aim was a little too good and the wine had been a little too strong; the chit flew from her fingers and bounced squarely off the dead center of his forehead. The waiter’s fingers touched the spot and then his gaze dropped to the floor, and the forlorn pair of credit chits lying at his feet. Clearing his throat, he bent at the waist and retrieved them both with admirable grace, setting them back on the table.

“No need, ma'am,” said the waiter, holding his hands up as if she were pointing a gun at him and not a credit chit. “Sir. It’s on the house. With thanks for your service.”

“Oh,” Shepard said, deflated. “Well. Uh. Sorry about the, um—” She waved her hand in the general direction of her own forehead, but the waiter only inclined his head. The spot on his forehead where she’d hit him was a little pink.

And Garrus, the bastard, used her moment of distraction to take care of the tip.


	59. Language

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Is someone multilingual? Do they try to teach another language to the other? How does it go?
> 
> Shepard POV. ME3.

 

“You ever think about how a translator will translate all kinds of bizarre expletives and attempt to make sense of inflection, but stumbles on things like _bosh'tet_ and _siha_ and _put down your weapon_?”

Garrus looked up from his datapad and tilted his head. “Sorry? My translator did something weird with that last bit. On… did you just say _put down your weapon_? In bed? Did we just get kinky in some new way?”

Shepard rolled her eyes with a smirk, and repeated herself very slowly. Garrus’ mandibles flared. “Wait. You said _put down your weapon_ in _turian_?”

Shepard leaned back, folding her arms behind her head. “I know that phrase in an _astonishing_ number of languages. ICT spared no expense making certain we could make potential hostiles stand down. It was practically a whole N-level. Four, maybe. Or five.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

She shook her head, and turned off her translator, gesturing for Garrus to do the same. With a look she recognized as skeptical even without words to back it, he did. Human lips and tongues and teeth had a tendency to mangle, but she managed another _put down your weapon_ in turian, which made Garrus nod and say something she hoped meant _good job_ and not _die human_ (alarmingly similar; ICT had made them learn the latter, too. Just in case). It was a little easier to say the same words in asari; much harder to make herself understood in salarian. Garrus chuckled.

When he reached to turn his translator back on, she grabbed his hand and said, “I love you, Garrus Vakarian,” in English. His mandibles fluttered, and this time when he reached for his translator, she didn’t stop him.

“Sounds different when you say put down your weapon in your human tongue,” he said mildly. “Sure you didn’t change it up at the end there?”

“Nope,” she said. “Just _put down your weapon_.”

“Right,” he said, still regarding her with his too-sharp gaze. “Well, in that case, you too, Shepard. You too.”


	60. Cooking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Who cooks?
> 
> Shepard POV. Probably post ME3?

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Shepard groaned.

Garrus, still holding his offering, took a step back and drew the tray away, as if he could hide it against his midsection. He ducked his head in the adorably flustered way that never failed to make her heart do a little flip. “What’d I do wrong? The cheese? It seemed like a lot, but—”

“No!” Shepard flung her hands toward the ceiling. “That’s the problem! It’s perfect.”

Garrus peered at her, mandibles flicking ever so slightly. “That’s the problem.”

“Yes! Dammit, Garrus, you can’t be better at cooking human food than _I_ am! It’s… it's _embarrassing_!”

One shoulder lifted. “I just followed the recipe.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just like _I_ followed the recipe that time I tried to make you skota? Or the time I tried to surprise you with dulcia? Or, God forbid, the time I so _spectacularly_ failed to cook katta?

"You… didn’t _completely_ burn the kitchen down.”

The laugh escaped her before she could swallow it. Time really did heal all wounds. Even the most horrifying of indignities, evidently. “There shouldn’t be _degrees_ of burning a kitchen down, and you know it.”

“So, uh,” Garrus gestured with the tray, “you’re going to give this a try, then?”

She glowered. Hard. And her stomach, the traitorous bastard, gave a very distressed, very longing, very _loud_ rumble. “Try? You know damned well I’m going to devour the whole thing. And then feel sorry for myself because I can’t even get the turian equivalent of a sandwich right.”

Garrus chuckled, setting the tray down in front of her at last. Her mouth, equally traitorous, salivated. “At least you mix a mean drink?”


	61. Groceries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Who buys the groceries?
> 
> Shepard POV.

Shepard cracked her knuckles, rolled her shoulders, straightened her spine, and then squinted at her list. Lists. Even typed, Garrus’ was little more than chicken scratch, and she had to look up almost every single thing on it before adding it to her cart. Just to make sure she wasn’t completely messing up. “Hell,” she muttered under her breath. “Get the wrong thing _once_ , and you never live it down.”

Never mind that Garrus was, evidently, allergic to kella; it wasn’t her fault the kella and kerra were right next to each other and she’d reached for the certain death instead of the favorite spice. And, to be fair, he’d offered to do the shopping (especially after the kella/kerra debacle). She just… refused to be defeated by a list. And a bunch of alien ingredients.

She was _Commander Shepard_ , dammit. She’d fought Reapers on foot. She could buy groceries. Even dextro-amino ones.

MREs. She missed MREs. But _some people_ (Garrus) cleared their throats and got all pointed when she resorted to endless packaged meals. Like it was a crime against vegetables. Or something.

“Hey,” she’d made the mistake of protesting once, “there’s something to be said for a ration bar.”

“Yeah,” he agreed dryly, completely unconvinced. “They taste like crap.”

 _Thank God for the extranet_ , she thought as she finished adding the last of her items to the cart, choosing her saved credit information, and sending the whole order through without having to dodge paparazzi. Or put on pants.


	62. Chapter 62

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Who stays up late? Who sleeps the most? Does the other have to force them to sleep/wake up?
> 
> Garrus POV.

“Shepard.”

“Mmm.”

“Shepard. There’s a perfectly serviceable bed not ten feet away. Big. Comfortable. With pillows.”

“Nrrrg. M'wake. Work.”

“And you’re in a real optimal state for… what are you doing? _Inventory_? Shepard, please. Learn to delegate.”

“Says the turian who never lets anyone else so much as _look_ at his gun.” Normally, there’d have been a double entendre in her words. Now, though, Shepard only lifted her head as though it weighed more than her Black Widow and blinked up at him, frowning. “When d’ _you_ sleep?”

Garrus chuckled, gently prying the datapad from her fingers and setting it to the side, out of her reach. The husk head yowled its displeasure as Garrus dared venture too close to its personal space. “When you do. Which means you’re keeping me up by refusing to keep to anything resembling a normal schedule.”

“You’re a damn liar, Vakarian.” Still, she hauled herself, weaving with weariness, to her feet, putting a hand out to steady herself. Sighing, he swept her into his arms, and knew she was genuinely exhausted when she didn’t even put up a token protest. “Fine,” she said, voice muffled by the proximity of her face to his chest. “I delegate you to sleep right now. ‘N wake me when you get up.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he replied, agreeing to the former while knowing very well he’d make damn sure she got every minute of rest her troubled dreams would allow her. Someone had to.


	63. A Moment Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Favourite romantic gestures during sex/orgasm?

 

She always knew, a moment before he did.

It wasn’t that he tensed, or went still, or held his breath, though sometimes he did one or all of these. It wasn’t that he gasped, or cried out, or breathed her name, though he often did these too.

His fingers twitched, grasping at the sheet, like they wanted to reach for her and were afraid to. So she reached for his hand before it could finish closing into its lonely fist, lacing her fingers with his in the grip they’d improvised and then long-since made habit. His fingers tightened then, tightened and held, like she was the only thing in his universe, the only thing that mattered, the only thing worth holding tight to. She held back just as hard.

 

#

 

He always knew, a moment before she did.

It wasn’t that she tensed, or went still, or held her breath, though sometimes she did one or all of these. It wasn’t that she gasped, or cried out, or breathed his name, though she often did these too.

Her head turned, her throat smooth and pale, and he didn’t need his visor to see how rapid her pulse was beneath her fragile skin. She, always so careful, so guarded, with her strength and her humor and her ’ _I’m fine_ ’s, head thrown back, trusting him. He bent his own head, forehead resting briefly against her jaw, mandibles fluttering against her pulse, tongue teasing the tremble until her arm looped around his neck and held tight, like she was afraid of falling, and he the only thing keeping her from it.

He held back, just as tight, and lent her the strength she needed to let go.

 

#

 

And sometimes it was her hand on his scarred cheek not letting him turn away, or his holding tight to the curve of her waist not letting her rush to the next crisis, the next demand. Her lips finding the underside of his jaw; his tongue seeking out the delicacy of her clavicle. Sometimes it was her blunt teeth against the unplated hide of his neck, or him letting her tears fall while pretending—because she wanted him to pretend—not to see them.

Whether it was the gasp or the cry or that sweetest breath of a name, it was always limbs wound tight around each other after, and the sound of heartbeats slowing, and his talons carding her hair until she pulled his hand to her mouth, pressing kisses one after another into his wrist, like promises.


	64. Beautiful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Sex: Lights on or off? Do they look at each other? Or is someone embarrassed?
> 
> Garrus POV.

Shepard was on him almost before the cabin door slid shut, her hands reaching with practiced ease for the clasps and seals of his armor, even as his automatically searched for hers. She grinned up at him as she managed his chestplate before he got her out of hers. He fumbled, and her grin slid into a laugh, sweet and triumphant and just about as joyful as she ever managed to be with the galaxy going to hell around them.

He had to look away to get the tricky, fiddly clasp near her waist, but she was still watching him when his gaze came back to her. He never tired of it, that look in her eyes, pupils blown so wide he could hardly see the ring of color around them. The focus. All turned his way. Intoxicating wasn’t strong enough a word, but it was the only one he found when he went looking. Her tongue darted out to moisten the full curve of her bottom lip, and only the hint of a smirk gave him warning before she pounced.

He hadn’t understood, back when it was stress relief with recon scouts and failed attempts at dating while being entirely too married to his job and his justice, it could be like this. That a person—a partner—could have a dozen facets, a dozen faces, all different, all equally captivating. Sometimes bright and fast and grinning; sometimes slow and languorous, faces lit only by the dim blue glow of the fishtank; sometimes with tears after, or laughter, or murmured words and promises neither could be certain of keeping but which seemed the only right things to say.

“Garrus,” she whispered. “Look at me.”

He did as she asked. Rosy-cheeked, hair tumbling over her shoulders, those focused eyes, that smile just for him. “Good,” she said, as she began to move, her gaze never leaving his. “Good, good.”

He tried to find his voice to agree with her, and couldn’t. But he didn’t look away, even as her own eyes fluttered shut, even as her movements lost a little of their smooth rhythm, stuttering into something infinitely more wonderful.

Spirits, but she was beautiful when she was happy.


	65. Footsie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Trying to play footsie with the other during a meeting
> 
> Garrus POV

“I-I’m sorry, Primarch, could you repeat that?”

Garrus sent a sharp glance Shepard’s way, but she only leaned forward, folding her hands, offering him the blandest of bland smiles before returning her attention to Primarch Victus. And her damnably agile toes to the inside of his ankle. She wore her dress uniform, as she so often did around the ship these days, but he still had no idea how she’d managed to slip her shoes off.Shepard’s insistence that he not wear armor to the meeting suddenly made a lot more sense.

As the toes crept higher, finding the sensitive spot where spur met calf he turned a groan into a cough. Shepard didn’t look at him, her attention evidently entirely on Victus, standing at the head of the conference table.

Victus paused. “Would you like to add something, Vakarian?”

“No, sir,” he managed, trying—and failing, mostly—to keep the warble out of his subharmonics. Victus looked at Shepard, who shrugged, as if to say _I don’t know, either_.

When the interminable meeting finally ended, Garrus remained in his seat. Some things his primarch did not need to see, and strained trousers definitely fit that bill. He pretended to be very studiously engaged in the symbols scrolling along his datapad until Victus and Wrex—who chuckled far too knowingly, damn him—left him and Shepard alone.

“Well, I hope you were paying attention to that, because I only got about five words out of the whole thing.”

Shepard smiled up at him, a wicked glint in her eyes. “Five’s better than I managed.”

“Shepard—”

She reached across the table, her fingertips ghosting along the back of his gloved hand, warm enough to set his nerves tingling even through the fabric.

“But EDI caught them all, so you can bring yourself up to speed at leisure. For now, though…”

She left the words unspoken.

“Shame this conference room has glass walls,” he remarked.

Shepard only winked, and spoke a few words to EDI about securing the area and locking the doors.


	66. Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: sex: … trying to go down on the other, under the table, during dinner
> 
> Shepard POV. Post ME3.

 

Payback was, as they said, a bitch. She’d known it was coming. Garrus Vakarian was not one to take a challenge lying down, and ever since she’d taken him by surprise in his office, she’d been anticipating his eventual revenge.

God, but everything sounded pornographic when you were trapped at an endless dinner with a turian busy between your legs.

“Where _did_ the Councilor go?” asked her dinner companion two seats down.

Shepard took a breath, smiled, and said—mostly without wavering, “Duty calls. As you know.”

Shepard didn’t know where the hell he’d gotten a tactical cloak from. She certainly had no idea how he’d managed to slip back into the exceptionally tedious state dinner and under the _tablecloth_ without anyone noticing. Fabric still moved, tactical cloak or not. He was sneaky, she had to give him that much; she hadn’t noticed his return until she felt hands unmistakably belonging to him slide up her bare ankles, caressing her calves, bringing the long, silken skirt up, up, up along with them.

For someone who talked such big talk, he could be damned quiet when he wanted to be. Beneath the tablecloth, beneath the fabric of her expensive skirt, he flicked his mandibles against the soft, sensitive flesh of her inner thighs.

“Are you quite all right?” asked another solicitous guest. “You look very—”

“Warm,” Shepard managed. “Just— _ah_ —warm.”

She felt Garrus’ silent laugh a moment before his tongue banished the capability for coherent speech. She had to concentrate very hard to keep her eyes open and her expression neutral. Relatively neutral. _Not_ orgasmic. She coughed and reached for her glass of wine as he added the sweep of one long finger to the fray.

“Admiral?”

“Fine,” she choked out, as Garrus very deftly pushed her straight over the edge from fine to decidedly not capable of engaging in conversation. “Just… uh… went down the wrong way. My… wine.”

Beneath the tablecloth, she felt the flutter of Garrus’ smile, and when he strolled back to take his seat a quarter of an hour later, Shepard was already plotting her revenge on his revenge.


	67. Gentle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Any kinks they clash on?
> 
> Garrus POV.

 

“What is it?” Garrus asked.

Shepard’s expression didn’t shift at all, which was precisely how he knew she was turning some unpleasant thing over and over. She’d been staring at the same datapad for almost half an hour, and he had yet to see her so much as tap the screen to indicate she was actually reading something.

“You have a look, Shepard.”

“I do not,” she argued, dropping the datapad and blinking up at him like he’d woken her from a deep sleep.

“You do. Something wrong?”

He asked innocently enough, expecting a reply about logistics or team dynamics or some gripe about the current inhabitants of her War Room, but the swift shadow that crossed her face said it was more serious than that. Or more personal. Which was, in his opinion, the same thing.

Setting down the gun he’d been diligently cleaning, he turned and faced her, giving her his full attention. Her fingers twisted in her lap, tugging at the hem of her shirt, and he didn’t think he was imagining the heightened color in her cheeks. “I… I don’t really know how to say it.”

Something of his distress must’ve shown, because her eyes widened and she instantly held up her hands in a vaguely soothing gesture. “No, no. No. It’s nothing… dire. It’s just…”

He waited at least five full seconds before prompting, “Just?”

Her color definitely rose now, and her teeth pulled at her bottom lip. More disconcerting, she dropped her gaze. He shifted closer to her, leaving only a hand’s width between them on her couch.

“It’s just,” she said to her lap, “you’re… so gentle. Always. I mean _always_. And I like gentle. I love gentle. You’re really, really good at gentle.” Her voice dropped, almost a whisper. “And… and sometimes I want—I want _not_ gentle.”

He shook his head, sitting back hard. “Not gentle,” he repeated, not able to modulate the unhappy quaver of his harmonics.

"Not _rough_ ,” she amended, her own tone nearly as unhappy as his, even without the dual-toned thrum. “Just… you know. It might be nice to spar. And then let the sparring—”

"Turn into a tiebreaker?”

“Right.” She lifted her face, and though her cheeks were still pink and her eyes still pleading, a faint smile pulled at her lips. “I’m not breakable. I’m even less breakable than the average human, even.”

He tilted his head, watching her eyes, watching for the truth. “I won’t hurt you.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean I _can’t_. I can’t hurt you. That’s not something… I’m not comfortable with that.”

“And I’d be concerned if you were. It’s not _pain_ I’m looking for Garrus, it’s the push. The precipice. A good fuck like a good fight, all adrenaline and impulse. Not gentle. Or premeditated. Sometimes.”

He nodded, hunching forward, staring at the floor between his feet. Shepard said nothing, but he could feel the waiting in her silence. “I—I’ll try,” he finally said. His mandibles fluttered into a smile. “Doubt you’ll last nine rounds, though.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“More like a promise.”

Their hands met in the middle, entwining with a squeeze just a shade harder than gentle.


	68. Hell of a Ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Early ME3. Primarch Victus POV.

He hadn’t risen to his position by being unobservant.

He’d suspected, a little, back on Menae. Vakarian spoke so often of her. He had even felt sorry for the man, fearing it perhaps a case of one-sided hero worship, destined for disappointment.

And then they were aboard the _Normandy_ , all of them together. Shepard, fierce and dedicated, pointed at problems like a weapon, with Vakarian ever present at her back, watchful as a bodyguard, subharmonics revealing what his stoic body language did not. And still Victus wondered. Still he watched.

He couldn’t have said what, precisely, tipped him off. They were, perhaps, a touch _too_ professional. Shepard clapped Urdnot Wrex on the shoulder; she spoke kindly to her crew; she took time for everyone. With Vakarian, she kept a distance only odd because it was one she maintained with no one else aboard her ship. They stood a pace or two apart always, her with her hands folded behind her back; him resolute and poised for action, even when he gave the appearance of being relaxed. And Victus watched, because they were a puzzle he could not solve, a story whose first line he did not know.

If not for the particular tilt of her head whenever Vakarian spoke to her, Victus might have thought that distance proof she did not feel for him the way he so clearly felt for her. It was a gesture so effortlessly turian it took Victus aback the first time he saw it, and doubtless his own subvocals hummed that surprise loudly to anyone who might recognize it for what it was. He doubted her human crew even noticed, but he was not human, and he’d once had a wife who tilted her head just so, as if he were just a little more real, a little more present, a little more _hers_ than anyone else.

Once, after a briefing in the War Room, after Shepard turned on her heel to answer yet another summons at the QEC, Victus said softly, “You’re a lucky man, Vakarian.”

And Vakarian, true to form, didn’t pretend not to understand. He didn’t prevaricate or dismiss. He said, “You don’t have to tell me that, Sir.” He paused then, glancing over his shoulder. Shepard’s voice carried out into the room, and though her words could not be made out, her irritation was clear. “Still not sure—”

“She’s sure,” Victus said, though he knew very well what Vakarian had been about to say.

“You think?”

 _I know_ , Victus thought, but he said nothing, merely flicking his mandibles in the kind of turian gesture that indicated the end of a conversation, rather than its continuance.

Some things were better found out on one’s own, after all. And Vakarian, unless he was entirely mistaken, was in for a hell of a ride.


	69. Calculus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From an anon prompt on tumblr:
> 
> "Sacrificing one life to save many others." There's no doubt Grace would do anything to save people who are in desperate need of help. But in order to save those people, she had to sacrifice someone. What of that someone was Garrus? Grace loves Garrus and vice versa, but would Grace sacrifice Garrus to save others? Or will she let them die if it means having Garrus forever?
> 
> AU AU AU SO AU, Shepard POV.

 

“Garrus,” Shepard commanded sharply. “That’s all the time you’ve got. You need to get to the escape pods. _Now_.”

“Give me a minute,” came his terse reply over the comms. “I’ve almost got—oh, _crap_.”

Another dull explosion rocked the ship, too much for the ailing shields to dampen. Her hand shot out and she managed to keep herself upright. She didn’t know if the pervasive smell of smoke was real, or part of a memory she’d much rather not be reliving in such technicolor detail. “Garrus!”

She didn’t need to understand all the nuances of turian subharmonics to pick up what Garrus wasn’t saying. “It’s no good, Shepard.”

“Then get your ass back up here—”

The elevators weren’t working. She slammed her fist hard against the panel but the black rectangle did not respond, and all she got for the effort was the stabbing pain of a bone breaking somewhere in her hand.

“That’s no good, either.” Something about the quality of his voice, the tenor of his words, told her he’d switched to their private channel. “I’d never make it, and I can mitigate the damage if I stay where I am.”

“Not acceptable. If someone’s got to go down with—”

“You had your turn,” he said, with a ghost of his usual wise-ass humor. Her gut clenched as she thought the word _ghost_. “And hey, if you can get Miranda to put me back together? Make sure she keeps the scars. I hear they—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shepard said. “Very attractive. Garrus, you—”

“Have to do this. Just like you would, if you were the one down here with your hands pressed on the ship’s wounds, keeping her from bleeding out. I’ve said it before and I—well. Maybe not. Ruthless—”

“Calculus,” she agreed, hating it. _Hating it._ “I know.”

“One life for a planet’s continued existence is a pretty good return.”

 _No_ , she thought. _It isn’t_.

But he was right. She’d have done the same damned thing. Every time.

“Garrus,” she said, slipping into the otherwise empty escape pod, trying hard not to look too hard at the empty seat across from her. “It’s been—”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It has.”

The escape pod jettisoned out and away, giving her courtside seats to the _Normandy’s_ destruction. Garrus’ sacrifice. By the time she was picked up, she’d be Commander Shepard again—stoic, dedicated, single-minded—but for now? For now she was alone, and she let herself cry.


	70. At the Bar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dragon Age/Mass Effect crossover. Shepard POV.
> 
> Shepard and Hawke meet in a bar.

The redheaded woman at the bar has the kind of laughter that cuts through all other noise, and she’s using the full force of it now. It’s not unpleasant—just loud—but Shepard missed the joke, so she can’t join in, and it’s definitely the kind of laughter that invites joining in.

Instead, Shepard looks around, searching for seat. It’s been a hell of a day. A hell of a year. A hell of—well. She’s earned a drink. But the place is packed wall-to-wall, with nary an empty chair in sight. She’s just about to give up and leave when the woman from the bar appears at her side, sidling up close and grinning, her pale eyes shining both with mirth and with welcome. “Free advice? You’re never going to find a seat being all polite about it. Not in here. Hey! You! Up! You’ve been here all night. Give someone else a chance.”

Wonder of wonders, the man doesn’t protest. He returns the woman’s grin and raises his mug, before giving up his table and staggering into the thick of the crowd. The woman throws herself into one of the seats, and pushes back the other with the toe of her boot in an indication for Shepard to take it.

“Saw you come in,” the woman says. “And saw you looking like a fish out of water. Name’s Hawke. You?”

Shepard blinks. It’s been a long time since she walked into a place and went unrecognized. Allers and her reports—Hackett and his _you’re the tip of the spear_ —have made her even more a public figure and household name than she was after Elysium. After a moment too long, she says, “Shepard.”

It feels okay to leave off the _Commander_ , for a change.

“Not from around here, are you, Shepard?”

“Uh.”

“That’s about what I thought.” Hawke rises, half-turning toward the bar. “Maker’s balls, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone looking more in need of a drink. Can I get you ale? Wine?”

“Ryncol?” Shepard asks.

“Never heard of it,” Hawke says. “But Maker knows what Corff keeps back there.”

“Wine will do in a pinch.”

A few moments later, Hawke returns with a bottle of wine and two glasses, plunking them down in the middle of the table. After pouring them both generous glasses, Hawke leans across the table and knocks a closed fist against the shoulder of Shepard’s hardsuit. “I have to know… is this dragon scale? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It’s… ablative ceramic with kinetic barriers?”

“I’m deathly envious, I’ll have you know. Looks like you could stand in a whole hail of arrows and never feel a thing. Handy, in a business like mine.”

“Right,” Shepard agrees, wondering if she shouldn’t immediately head for the exit again. She’s seen some weird people in some weird bars over the years, but nothing quite like this one. She glances down at her armor. It’s intact, which is strange. She’d thought—she’d remembered—but no. She drinks from her glass instead. Drinking’s nice. She’s earned it. “Arrows. Definitely. Um. What is your business, exactly?”

Hawke laughs again, just as bright and inviting as before. “Oh, you know. Little of this, little of that. Keeping unruly politicians in line, navigating tense arguments between diametrically opposed factions completely unwilling to compromise, helping everyone and their brother solve their problems, with a side of digging through detritus to find useless junk I can sell to keep my mabari in kibble.” Hawke makes a face. “Between you and me? It’s mostly killing giant spiders.”

Finally, finally, Shepard laughs and some tied-up, awful little knot in her belly loosens. “Sounds familiar. You have people starting little fights while completely ignoring the _giant_ problems threatening them and everyone else?”

“Do I!” Hawke throws her hands up in the air. “It’s enough to drive a woman to drink. More wine?”

“Sure,” Shepard says, settling back in her seat, holding out her glass for a refill.

“I swear, it’s ‘Hawke this’ and ‘Hawke that’ and ‘Hawke, my mine is full of dragons’ and ‘Hawke, I need you to rescue my kid from demons’ and ‘Hawke, you’re a lady now, put on a dress and go mingle but don’t forget to go kill all those bothersome mercenaries out on the Wounded Coast when you’re done’. Exhausting.”

“Oh, I’ve heard my fair share of ‘Shepard, you’re the only one who can help’ where help can range from chatting with ornery politicos to stopping the Reapers. I get it. You can’t say no, but hell, sometimes you really, really _want_ to.”

Hawke sighs. “But then who’d kill the giant spiders?”

“Guess it has to be us,” Shepard says, raising her glass in a silent toast. Hawke joins her, and they clink the edges of their cups. “Someone else would probably get it wrong.”

“And yet you seem a long way from home,” Hawke says softly. “What brings you here, of all places?”

“I don’t know,” Shepard says, remembering light and a promise and searing heat as the world went red, and then black. So black. _Your boyfriend has an order for you._ “I think I was supposed to wait for someone. But… you know, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just go looking for him.”

Hawke smiles, tipping the remainder of the wine in their two glasses. “One for the road,” she says. “And then, by all means go.” Her half-smile is fond and a little sad, and belies the earlier jollity of her laughter. “I think we’re neither of us very content to sit and let the world happen _to_ us, are we?”

“No,” Shepard says. “I suppose we aren’t.”


	71. Popular

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garrus POV, endgame at some point

It wasn’t that Shepard didn’t laugh. Of course she did. Often, even. 

Never, in all his years of knowing her, had Garrus heard her _howl_  with laughter, and yet when he pushed open the door to their apartment and began to call out a hello, _howling_  was precisely what he heard. No other word for it. Until his brain caught up with what he was hearing, he thought she was crying. Maybe locked in some kind of fierce battle. Possibly dying.

_No,_  said his brain. _Laughing. Definitely. Laughing._

He was more alarmed still when he pushed open their bedroom door and found her bent over a datapad as if in pain. Sounds very, very much like, uh–no other word for it– _porn_  filtered up from her lap. She lifted eyes streaming with tears and makeup in a face bright-cheeked and mottled and said without preamble, “Have you _seen this_?”

Even her voice sounded wrong, brutalized by laughter. Garrus’ plates itched. “Um,” he replied. “I—um?”

She lifted the screen, revealing a (obviously fake) redheaded human woman with truly prodigious–and disturbingly upright–breasts, head flung back while she exuberantly faked the throes of passion. “Should I—” he began, stuttering to silence when the camera shifted, uh, further down the redhead’s body to reveal a fringed head engaged in, um, bringing forth the woman’s cries. When the turian lifted his head, Garrus only half-caught the smug expression; his eyes were drawn, instead, to markings the precise hue of his own. He was pretty sure the scarred side of the face was all theatrical prosthetic. The markings were near enough to the ones he saw in his own mirror to border on libelous. Given what this turian was doing. Um.

He blinked. Shepard _howled,_ falling backward on the bed and actually _kicking her heels_  into the soft mattress. Her breasts, he noted, though not _quite_ as, uh, sizable, at least had the grace to obey the laws of physics. 

“What the hell am I looking at? Shepard?”

She curled onto her side, swiping the back of her hand over her cheeks. The sight of smeared mascara only started her laughing again. “I think it’s pretty obvious, big guy.”

“What—who— _why_?”

“Joker sent it to me. Because he’s an _asshole_. Apparently being war heroes has made us  _very_ –” She bit her lip, clearly fighting down another outburst. “We’re very popular. Or, you know, they are. Pretending to be us. She’s Honeypot Sweete. He’s Rectus Dyx.” Shepard squeezed her eyes shut, mouthing the words _Rectus Dyx_  over again silently. “Apparently we should be flattered. They’re very famous. Joker says.”

Gingerly, he retrieved the datapad and skimmed through several minutes. And then several more. Shepard draped herself over his back, wrapping her arms around him, the better to point things out. “Her character is Private Goatherder.” The low rumble of her laughter was a pleasant vibration against his cowl. “I’d be annoyed at the demotion, but I mean _honestly._  Private. Goatherder. _Goatherder.”_ The turian returned to the screen, mandibles glistening and– _oh Spirits_. Garrus choked out a strangled noise. The turian on the screen made one alarmingly similar. “This fine fellow is, wait for it, Barass Shakarian. Do you get it? Bare–”

“Ass. Yes. It’s poetry. Elcor Hamlet be damned.”

“You haven’t seen the half of it.”

“Why do I get the feeling _half_  is not all I’m going to have to endure here?”

“There’s this part with–look, I’m telling you right here, right now, you ever come at me with those teeth looking to draw blood? You and the Carnifex are getting as intimate as these two.”

_Blood?_  said his brain, horrified. “ _Blood_?” Garrus said, horrified. “But why would anyone—that’s not sexy at _all_ —I would _never.”_

Shepard squeezed him and pressed a kiss to the side of his neck, her hair falling over his shoulder to tickle the side of his face. “That’s okay,” Shepard whispered in the voice that always did to him what she claimed his bad boy turian voice did to her. “You can do that thing if you want. Oh, and that. And you are _much_  better at _that._ I never have to writhe around and pretend when you’re doing _that.”_

“Can I do it now? To save me from this torture?”

This laugh came low and breathy and not howling at all. “Ooh, Barass Shakarian, take me now.”

“There’s a special place in hell, Shepard.”

She giggled, reaching down to turn off the screen. “Funny, that’s exactly how their scene started out, too.”


	72. Valentine's Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Can you imagine Grace and Garrus fighting off Reapers and Grace tells Garrus not to die because, "Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and you promised we would go on a romantic date that doesn't involve Reapers, armor, and calibrating... Fine, a little calibrating."
> 
> Shepard POV.

It had been so long since, oh, Noveria or Therum—back when Garrus couldn’t seem to find cover even when a convenient pile of shipping containers or short walls was right in front of him—that Shepard had nearly forgotten the frequency at which he’d been so often hit. 

This backwater nowhere planet with its relatively unimportant smash-and-grab mission was proving an unhealthy reminder of the old days. 

It wasn’t quite damage of the rocket-to-the-face variety, but Garrus was off-kilter, a little out of step, a lot off his game, and had already taken a handful of shots. Her HUD beeped a warning about the level of his shields, but before she could snap out a warning or a command, his grunt of genuine pain crackled over the comms.

“Get down and stay down!” she barked. Three grenades, several incendiary explosions and one _extremely_ satisfying headshot later, the swarm of hostiles was gone. 

She found Garrus a dozen meters away, leaning up against an outcropping of smashed rock.

“Now you find cover,” she muttered, but without venom. Blue blood leaked out from between his fingers. “Tali’s gone to get the shuttle.”

“Sorry,” he offered, a thrum of pain in his subharmonics. “Should’ve–told you. Distracted. News from Palaven just before–ugh. Stupid.”

The faint pang of worry that twisted her gut was immediately relegated to the _when Garrus isn’t bleeding out_  pile. “Medi-gel?”

“Dispenser’s busted.” His mandibles flicked another apology even as his gaze went unfocused.

“Hey,” she said, “eyes on me, Vakarian. You think I’m going to let a paltry life-threatening wound throw a wrench in our plans, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Her voice cracked on the words _life-threatening_  but Garrus didn’t seem to notice. His eyes, however, did track back to her; she saw the moment his pupils fixed on her and held. He blinked slowly.

“Plans?”

“Oh, you’re not getting out of them. Remember? Romantic date? No Reapers, no armor, no calibrating?”

“Ahh,” he said at length. “The human love day. With, ow, all the hearts. Right.”

“Valentine’s day, yeah.” She thought she heard the shuttle approaching but didn’t dare look away from Garrus to spot it.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he agreed. She squinted at the wound, trying to tell herself it wasn’t her imagination that the blood was slowing, that perhaps it wasn’t as bad as she’d initially thought. “Bought chocolates. Heart-shaped box. Joker laughed at me.”

Shepard snorted, certain now of the sound of the approaching Kodiak. To reassure herself as much as him, she bent and pressed her forehead to his. He leaned into the touch.

“But are you… sure? About the calibrating? ‘Cause I could think of a… a few things. That could use an expert, um, tweaking.”

She huffed a soft breath of laughter. “Yeah, well, we’ll let Dr. Chakwas patch you up and then you’d better be prepared to put your money where your mouth is.”

He snorted. “Or my mouth where the–”

She groaned even as she dropped a human kiss on his scarred mandible. “Yes, Garrus. Precisely.”


End file.
